


Duality

by raendown



Series: Requested Works [13]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:11:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18545788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Walking patrol around a university for mages probably sounded like a wild time but Tobirama has never found it all that exciting. He's not even technically supposed to be here. When responding to a tripped alarm becomes a desperate attempt to stay alive, however, excitement is the last thing on his mind. All he's ever wanted is a quiet life alone with his books until he finds himself bound to Uchiha Madara in the most impossible way and finally learns to think about more than just himself - in a way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [copyninken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copyninken/gifts).



> What began as a "requested work" and then rapidly grew out of control? This beast!
> 
> **Story will update every Sunday.**

He wasn’t even a professor. Tobirama scowled to himself and pulled the edges of his cloak tighter in search of whatever pocket he had dropped his warming stone in to. Such a simple rune and yet it was no help to him if he couldn’t find it. Of course, he wouldn’t need it if his brother hadn’t turned those puppy eyes on him and begged with his bottom lip wobbling pathetically, so disgustingly sad that Tobirama had agreed to do as he asked just to make that face go away. He wasn’t even a professor! He should not be out here in the evening chill performing a professor’s duties.

A huff of frustration escaped him and he dropped his handful of cloak, shoving it back so he could pat himself down for other pockets. His habit of misplacing things was the whole reason he’d started sewing extra pockets in to his clothing whenever he remembered to but the problem was that now he had too many pockets to look through and his things still ended up lost.

Fingers closing around something cool and smooth, he fought back the excess material to pull his hand out with a cry of triumph, expecting to see the warming stone he was certain he’d picked up that morning. Then he snorted in disgust when he found half a broken pestle instead. No one was around to watch him stomp one foot in irritation. No warming stone and now he was probably going to spend the rest of the evening wondering which mortar was missing its pestle. Had he taken someone else’s? Had he broken his own?

How was he supposed to properly grind faerie wings – willingly gifted, of course – if he hadn’t the right tools?

Contrary to his predictions, any thoughts of preparing ingredients for his various experiments came to an abrupt halt when he rounded the corner and saw the other person he was meant to be paired with for that evening’s patrol. Madara looked as dramatic as ever, clad in fiery red from head to toe as though his natural element wasn’t obvious in the way sparks clung to his hair and smoke rose out of his fingertips in fits and starts. Standing along one of the outer passages, positioned next to an opening in the wall, his hair rose and fell as the wind howled outside. The idiot would have frozen in minutes dressed down as he was if he wielded any other element.

After a few moments of standing in one place and scowling as hard as he could Tobirama accepted that the other man hadn’t noticed him there. White skin and sharp footsteps should have made him rather obvious in the dark but Madara had always been a little too wrapped up in himself to pay much attention to others.

Tobirama threw the broken pestle at him.

“What the fuck!?” Madara screeched in surprise when stone sparked against stone right next to his face, leaping away and spinning in a full circle until finally his eyes landed on where Tobirama had now crossed his arms with an expectant expressed. “Are you kidding me? I was supposed to walk patrols with your brother tonight; what the hell are you doing here?”

“Nothing pleasant, I assure you. Brother decided that planning a date with Mito on the same night he was scheduled to walk the halls with you was an excellent idea. One would think the security of his own university would be more important than gargling someone else’s tonsils but I have never claimed to understand how his mind works. And so here I am.” He smirked a little when Madara wrinkled his nose with disgust.

“Must you refer to it like that?”

“Have you seen them kiss? That is essentially what he is doing.” Tobirama slid his hands in whatever pockets were closest to ward off the winter chill. “Whatever you want to call it, he asked me to cover his duties while he is otherwise occupied.”

Visibly put off, Madara waved both hands aimlessly in protest. “You’re not even a professor!”

“I know!” It wasn’t often the two of them agreed on much but in this they were of the same mind.

Of course, Tobirama was more than old enough to be a professor here at the school should he have wished to be. He certainly had more than enough knowledge to teach any of several different subjects. Unfortunately for the masses he had very little interest in taking so much time away from his research, preferring to stick with his technical status as student and continue on in the life of a scholar. Nothing appealed to him more than the rush of discovering some ancient scrap of knowledge written by some unnamed mage and finding a use for it.

He did not appreciate errands like this one taking up precious time he could have been using to look more in to the effects of those crystals Touka had given him for his birthday a century or so ago. If his estimations were correct then they might have been formed from a naturally occurring phenomenon that only happened during a massive outburst of dragon magic. Such things had never been recorded!

“You’re off in your own head again already. Great. Well this is going to be just tons of fun, isn’t it? Babysitting you while looking out for students getting up to shenanigans. You know how they get when they catch the first hints of graduation! I’ve had three try to break in to my office in the past week and there’s still a month left of classes!”

“Looking for exam notes?”

“Obviously.” Madara snorted as though he hadn’t done the exact same thing when he was a student, sneaking a peak at his teacher’s notes so he knew exactly which spells he should study up on for the exam.

Tobirama snickered without bothering to hide it. Served the asshole right for being so uptight all the time. He hoped some of those students had got what they came for before Madara caught them. Later he would have to figure out who they were and provide them with the answers himself, having taken the class on a whim a decade or so back. The poor idiot probably didn’t have enough imagination to change his exam from year to year.

“Ugh, let’s just get this over with. We usually start with the western courtyard to make sure no one is trying to perform any summonings under the moonlight.” Spinning on his heel, hair and cloak flaring out with a wholly unnecessary amount of drama, Madara stalked away down the hall without waiting to see if he was being followed.

“I remember my first summoning.” Tobirama sighed wistfully. Ahead of him, Madara twitched.

Before he could get too far in to his reminiscing about the time he summoned a nether beast that took a liking to Madara’s hair – poor taste but it had probably been the funniest thing the university had seen in several decades – their patrol was interrupted before it could even truly begin.

As soon as the alarm went off Madara, long used to having it tripped by miscreant students, pressed one palm against the closest wall and murmured something in a low voice. The wards rippled under his touch and Tobirama could hear them deep down in the parts of himself that had been connected with the world’s magic since his very first breath. He knew as well as anyone else who had been here at the school long enough that the wards were alive in a way he couldn’t explain, although being a student he also knew that they wouldn’t listen to him as they did to Madara. More poor taste. That man had nothing to say that would be even half as interesting as the things Tobirama had floating around in his head.

“What have they to report?” he asked when his companion set off without saying anything, scurrying to keep up.

“The alert came from the northern edge of the property. What anyone is doing all the way out there is beyond me. If we’re lucky maybe they’ll fall in to the river before we get there.” Every word Madara spoke was dripping with offense as though whoever was out there causing trouble had done him a personal injustice by choosing to do so on the night it was _his_ duty to watch over the massive castle housing their university.

Drifting along behind him, not half as worried, Tobirama snickered again at the image of someone falling in to the river. Long ago when the first mages had created this place of learning they had been just a wee bit suspicious of outsiders. History was a little vague on exactly which one of them did it but Tobirama’s theory was that it had actually taken all of them to convince the earth herself to raise up high and set the university grounds far above the rest of the surrounding countryside, sheer cliffs at every boundary line and only one set of stairs carved in to the eastern wall. Just imagining someone stupid enough to topple off the cliff and down in to the northern river left Tobirama smiling. People were idiots. If somehow a non-magic person had found their way to this hidden place and trekked all the way up a staircase that would be invisible to them he sort of hoped they fell back down the cliff just for being so insufferably nosey.

Neither of them spotted anyone on their way to where the wards had been disturbed, not another soul awake or at least none of them stupid enough to be up and about on a cold winter night such as this. Which was strange, actually, unless somehow the disturbance had come from outside the boundaries because if it had come from inside then they should have passed someone on the way to the scene. After exiting the front doors of the castle there was really nowhere for anyone to hide on the wide open grounds surrounding it.

As they drew closer, merely a few dozen feet away, Tobirama began to twitch.

“I don’t like this,” he grumbled.

“What?” Despite the fact that there was no love lost between them, he appreciated that Madara had the good sense to stop and listen to him. He did have his smart moments.

“The snow,” Tobirama pointed out. “It’s undisturbed. And there are no whispers.”

“Whispers?”

Cutting one hand through the air impatiently, he snapped, “Yes, whispers, the water in the snow. I _can_ speak to my own element just as you can. No one has gone through here in the past few hours. If they had then the snow would remember.”

Madara eyed him contemplatively for a moment and then nodded. With absolutely no connection to water himself, he would have to rely entirely on Tobirama’s word for that. Unfortunately the fire in his veins did nothing to make him a cautious man, preferring to bull his way in to a situation while yelling his questions, and that tendency showed itself now. With a decisive slant of his brow he strode forward and stretched one hand out, probably intending to speak with the wards again and ask what they remembered about when the alarm had been tripped.

He cried out with surprise and stumbled back in to Tobirama, sending both of them crashing down in the very center of the glyph lighting up underneath their feet. Completely hidden by snow, diameter large enough that Tobirama could have stretched out completely and not been able to touch both sides, it glowed with a pale yellow light the moment Madara tried to pass beyond the far side and cast him back, trapping them both within.

“I told you I didn’t like this,” Tobirama murmured, already reaching out with raw magic to feel around the edges of the glyph.

“Shut up. What’s happening?”

“Oh, I _really_ don’t like this.” That was all the answer Tobirama managed to give before the light doubled in intensity and the world around them began to warp. Madara screeched in his ear and Tobirama couldn’t help but agree – with the panic, not with the level of decibels he managed to achieve. This was definitely cause for panic.

They had barely a handful of seconds to process what was happening. One minute they lay in a heap together in the virgin snow outside of their beloved university and the next they were transported to what would have looked like an underground cavern of some sort if not for the wind blowing in from one end. Someone had forcibly relocated them to a cave. Someone was looking forward to an early grave when they found their way back home.

“If you even _think_ the words ‘I told you so’ I will rearrange your face.” Madara sat upright just to snarl at Tobirama, covering his discomfort with the usual bluster.

“Now seems as good a time as any to tell you that my dearest wish is for you to someday learn to use your brain for thinking first before the yelling starts.”

“Fuck. You.”

“We may have to resort to that for entertainment, as abhorrent as the idea is. I’m sure you haven’t spent the brainpower to notice but we appear to be sealed in here.” Tobirama lifted one of his eyebrows and gestured towards where the cave twisted out of sight. No visible barrier could be found but he could already feel the muffling effect of some kind of dampening spell.

Not only had they been sent away but they had been trapped here. Wonderful. Tobirama wondered what he had done recently to piss the spirits off so much that he ended up trapped in a cave with only Uchiha Madara for company. Literally anyone else in the world would have been better – except for maybe Uchiha Izuna. Madara’s younger brother was probably the only person more annoying than him. Even worse, he somehow had less social tact than the world’s biggest buffoon.

Both men pushed themselves to their feet and moved towards the far side of the cave where a bend in the path would have led towards the outside world. A few meters before they would have reached it they were stopped, something unseen sizzling in warning. Neither of them were really all that interested in using themselves as a test subject to find out what they were being warned away from. At least, not without knowing who laid the barrier, what their element was, how willing they were to separate limbs from bodies, that sort of thing.

Edging backwards until the sizzling stopped, Madara dropped his face in to what was possibly the sourest expression he had ever managed, arms crossing and shoulders tensing until they were hiked up around his ears.

“This is bullshit,” he declared.

“I hate to say you’re right about anything but in this case I am compelled to agree.” Tobirama looked around for somewhere to sit, disappointed to realize there was nowhere that wasn’t covered in ice or snow. He ignored the offended the mess of huffs and snorts behind him as Madara tried to figure out if he was offended or smug.

After a while the man settled with, “Between the two of us we can find a way through it, why are you sitting down?”

“Because between the two of us I am not volunteering to get close enough to that barrier to make a physical inspection. If you would shut up for a few moments I could gather my concentration to look at it in other ways.” Scraping a small area clean with the side of one boot, he added, “Unless you also happen to have studied for as long as I have and understand how to connect yourself to another person’s magic? No? I didn’t think so.”

“Could you be any more of an asshole?” Madara snarled.

“Probably but they say imitation is the highest form of flattery and I have no intention of flattering you.”

While his companion took a few seconds to work through that Tobirama sat down on the cold stone floor, as free of snow as it was going to get, and turned himself inwards to the power flowing through him. Madara’s inevitable screech of anger went in one ear and out the other as Tobirama let his consciousness gather and then flow outwards, stretching himself until he could feel every inch of his surroundings. The bright sensation of _fire-passion-fearless_ took concentration to think past, as Madara often did, but Tobirama forced himself to push farther towards the _warm-forbidding-apology_ that awaited him at the mouth of their impromptu dungeon. Strange, he thought. Those weren’t the feelings he had expected to get from this little exploration. Whoever set up that barrier felt guilty while doing so.

Carefully brushing along the edges, Tobirama was able to feel for points where the spell was weakest and slip underneath them, filling the proverbial cracks with his own magic and leaving pieces of himself behind like those hidden landmines non-magical folk had been so fond of during their first couple of wars.

Retreating back in to his own body and opening his eyes felt like a loss. It was always a bit of a jarring experience feeling the world in such an intimate way and then opening his eyes to find himself nothing more than human once again. Existing as conscious magic made him feel free and unconstrained while coming back to his body left him overly aware of how cold his ass had become from sitting on frozen rock. Popping his eyes open, he grimaced and clenched both butt cheeks in an effort to encourage some blood flow.

“Well?” Madara demanded. “Did the oh-so-smart scholar find anything useful?”

“I’ve weakened the barrier but it’ll take time to fall apart completely. Until then there’s really nothing for us to do but wait.” Not the best news he’d ever had to deliver, although the irritation in Madara’s expression was at least a small lift to his mood.

“Seriously? We just sit here? And do nothing?”

“I have done something. That something will take time. If you have anything _you_ would like to add to my efforts then be my guest.” Tobirama waited and when his companion gave no response he hummed in satisfaction. Being right was a pleasure all on its own but being right when Madara was wrong? That was always best.

Since it was already quite late his hope was that he could somehow fall asleep or at least doze off to pass the hours more quickly. Madara stomped around trying to find a place of his own to settle down while Tobirama closed his eyes again and told himself very firmly to ignore the cold seeping deeper and deeper in to his limbs with every passing moment. If he lost part of his ass cheeks to frostbite someone was going to pay very deeply for such a transgression.

More than an hour passed in complete silence after the other idiot with him finally settled down and yet still Tobirama couldn’t bring himself even close to dozing off. Water was his element of course but he certainly didn’t enjoy sitting around in the frozen form of it for ages on end. Around the time he realized he had all but stopped shivering he also realized that perhaps losing an extremity or two was the least of his problems, though it still ranked fairly high in his mind. His limbs were fairly important to his ability to perform certain spells.

Curious in a sluggish sort of way, he lifted one hand and tried to wiggle his fingers.

“Ah,” he murmured, voice slurring. “That’s not good at all.”

“What’s not good?” Madara’s voice demanded. Up until he spoke the man had appeared to be sleeping, hunched down with the snow around him melting, body heat raised to keep warm.

Tobirama forced his head to turn and meet his companion’s eyes. It took a few moments to process the sudden cursing, the way Madara scrambled across the cave to kneel in front of him. When large hands enclosed his own he felt nothing.

“Your fucking lips are blue! _Actually_ blue!” Madara blew on his hands. Logically Tobirama could guess that he was heating the air but it appeared his fingers had gone entirely numb. At some point while he sat there and waited for sleep hypothermia had found him instead. Irritating. More so because he found thinking straight incredibly difficult once he actually tried to think about anything.

“Definitely not good,” he said.

“Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” Madara demanded.

“As if you would have cared.” Difficult as it was to concentrate on anything, the antagonistic relationship between them was as natural as his own heartbeat and required even less thought.

Predictably, Madara snorted, almost dropping his hands in retaliation. “Fine way to speak to the only one around who can keep you alive,” he snarled.

Contrary to his attitude he did continue to breathe warm air over the frozen digits between them. If they’d had a little warning before getting summarily evacuated from university grounds then maybe one of them might have brought along gloves or a scarf. Well, Madara wouldn’t have because he didn’t need either but Tobirama certainly would have bundled up a little more. Either their captor hadn’t thought of these particular consequences or they didn’t really care and he would only find out which if he lived through the cold night.

For the most part Tobirama sat still through Madara’s attempts to bring feeling back in to his hands, even if that was largely in part due to the fact that he was worried any movements would send him toppling over sideways. Only the fact that he had settle in place seemed to be keeping him upright. After a while Madara gave a frustrated growl and Tobirama blinked up at him wordlessly in question.

“This is taking too long. I can’t breathe the rest of you warm again – also that would be creepy and I hate the images in my head now. I need to warm all of you up at once.”

“So do that,” Tobirama mumbled.

“Well it’s not as easy as ‘just do it’! I could build a flame easy enough but it would burn you before it did much good. There’s…another option. But you’re not going to like it. Hell, _I_ don’t like it.” At Tobirama’s grunt he took a deep breath and absently rubbed the hands between his own. “Open your pathways to me. Your core magic. I’ll merge it with mine and lend you my fire; that should keep us both warm.”

Staring at him in complete shock, Tobirama managed to ask, “Have you gone completely mad?”

It was, by all accounts, a perfectly understandable question. There were few things more intimate that one mage could do for another than allow them to touch their core magic. Not even most married couples would be comfortable bearing their souls in such a manner. To do so for someone he didn’t even like, let alone trust, the very idea was laughable.

Yet Madara was far from laughing.

“There has to be another way to get warm,” he insisted. Madara sighed.

“No. Your body temperature is so low, there’s no other way to warm all of you at once without killing you. I could wrap around you and raise my own heat but it wouldn’t work fast enough and you would burn.” Shaking his head, he frowned. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I thought something else would work, believe me.”

Tobirama closed his eyes for a moment to think and realized a few moments later that there was no longer any time to do so. When he tried to open his eyes again it was a fight, a harrowing effort, and he recognized that Madara was right; he was too far gone.

“Fine,” he whispered.

Without asking he couldn’t be sure if Madara was doing this because he would never hurt Hashirama by letting his brother go out like this or simply because he was a man with enough morals not to let another human die right in front of him. Tobirama considered it but decided against asking. He probably wouldn’t like the answer and it didn’t truly matter. In the end he was still being offered a free ticket to survival, a one-time offer going fast.

At the very least Madara was merciful enough not to be smug about it. He nodded once before shuffling around behind where Tobirama sat and wriggling in between his frozen bulk and the wall to press their bodies together, chest to back.

“The closer we are the better this will work,” he said. “Don’t worry, I hate it just as much as you. One little cuddle and then we _never_ speak of this again.”

“I’ll clam up if you do,” Tobirama assured him.

His companion grunted. With his body now slumped backwards against another form Tobirama found his head lolling forward to stare down at the hands interlocking with his own again to create two points of connection, making a circle of their pathways for their magic to flow along. Clever, he had to admit. Positioning them like this would leave them in a constant state of feedback with each other.

Despite already agreeing to do this, opening himself to Madara proved to be one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life. Every instinct in his body cried out against the first touch of another’s magic where he should feel only his own and yet with sheer stubbornness he managed to keep himself from shoving the other man out. He expected the feeling of being invaded, the most sacred part of him violated when it should have remained pure only until the unlikely day he intentionally invited another in.

What he did not expect was the harmony. Madara’s core and his own merged together as easily as stirring the ingredients for one of his elixirs. Warmth suffused him as promised but it wasn’t quite the warmth he expected, less body heat and more a sort of inner peace the likes of which he’d never achieved in his life.

In the darkness his inner eye was blinded by a light, fire rushing along the rivers of his core magic, cool blue turned to burning gold and dancing in such a way he couldn’t distinguish fire or water.

And he wasn’t alone. Tobirama stared unseeing at the cavern around them and knew only the second presence inside his mind, the hesitant brush of a thought that wasn’t his own. Ever too curious for his own good, he pushed towards it and gasped as he encountered Madara’s mind, faint but there, the edges of that twisted and baffling mind just beyond an ephemeral and very much proverbial wall. He shouldn’t. Tobirama knew he shouldn’t. But his curiosity had gotten him in to trouble many times in his life and this would certainly not be the last.

He pushed. Just a quick gentle nudge, inching a little closer for a better look. What better way to understand a man’s actions and personality than to take a look inside his mind and the feelings therein? For a moment he could feel the edges of Madara’s curiosity echoing back at him and, incredibly, he got the impression that he didn’t so much break in rather than the door being willingly cracked open. It was a thrill until the unthinkable happened. He slipped. He fell in to Madara in a way that would have been impossible to describe to anyone who had not experienced the same thing before but if he hadn’t just given himself entirely over to another he would have had only one thing to say.

They were one.


	2. Chapter 2

“I can feel their energies here.”

Hashirama paused in his fight against the snow currently trying to suck him under and looked up to see where they had stopped. It didn’t look like much. Everything around them was covered in snow nearly two feet thick and so pristine it was almost hard to distinguish the shapes of the hills around them. The one they had stopped at wasn’t different in any way from the others except perhaps being slightly smaller.

“You’re sure?” he asked. Hinata tilted her head and smiled at him, veins bulging out around her strange eyes. Several of the others with them took a subtle step backwards.

“Absolutely, Headmaster. Their energies are somewhere inside, underneath the earth. They’ve changed.”

“What do you mean ‘they’ve changed’? Changed how?”

Hinata smiled again and turned to look at him. “I cannot say,” was all she said.

Muttering about the irritating vagueness of seers, Hashirama shook his head and closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but he absolutely knew when he found it. A cave; the entrance to an entire system of caves, actually. From the echoes in the ground he wasn’t sure whether to feel triumphant or even more put off at the thought of searching through all that open space. All he wanted was his brother and his best friend. Was that too much to ask?

“You will find them.” Hinata nodded once, sightless eyes locked on to his, and he wondered for the hundredth time how seers always managed to do that when they were all blind, their worldly vision exchanged for inner sight. “Good afternoon, Headmaster.”

“Are you–? She’s leaving. One of you go with her, please, and make sure she gets back the school alright.” One of their group broke off to escort the young woman wherever she ended up while Hashirama kept his eyes on the prize before him. So much ground to cover – literally – but as vague and difficult as they were on the whole, seers were also known for being irritatingly accurate.

With several of his strongest faculty members behind him, backup in case whoever took Tobirama and Madara away from the school was still around, he walked forward to punch a hole in what looked like a completely solid wall. It caved immediately. Perfectly piled snow collapsed inwards and rained down until finally the cave entrance was revealed to them. An ingenious hiding place, he had to admit, something that a random passerby would never have detected until the winter season passed.

A smile of triumph flitted across his features as he waded his way in to the tunnel and kicked open a path for the rest to follow until finally they made it far enough inside where the snow thinned. Looking around as he made his way carefully forward didn’t tell him much. It was a natural cave, no signs of any tool markings non-magical or otherwise.  He made a cursory glance around for footprints but the storm that had kicked up around midnight had done a good job erasing the possibility of that. There was a hum of sorts in the air, however, and that was as much warning as he got before walking headlong in to a barrier spell.

Which, luckily, had already been weakened enough that instead of deadly force he was met with only a brief shower of fire sparks that came out more like electricity, leaving his hair standing out from his head like the chia pets he used to see on non-magical television.

While his teachers fussed and flocked and made sure he was alright Hashirama narrowed his eyes at the barrier.

“That felt like my brother’s magic,” he said. “Except not. Not entirely, anyway. Kurenai, my dear, could you come have a look at this please?”

The head of his wards and perception department, Yuhi Kurenai was the best one to check out the barrier he so unwittingly walked right in to. She was also the most qualified out of all of them to check for any other illusions that might be tangled up in it and confirm that whatever they found beyond the barrier was _not_ an illusion.

Stepping back a few paces, Hashirama allowed the woman a little space to shuffle around him and get to work. Her red eyes reminded him a little of his brother’s when she narrowed them in concentration, fingers reaching out to pause just before the barrier, close enough to draw out a faint hissing sound and a warning flash of light gold an inch or so from her fingers. No one spoke as she stood there motionless. It took a couple of minutes but eventually she turned around with a curious slant to her brows and a frown on her lips.

“Your brother fiddled with it first, Headmaster. He added a few proverbial bombs. I’m afraid his magic is too bright for me to get a proper read on the other person underneath but I _can_ tell you that there’s something tantalizingly familiar about it.”

“Not good news,” Hashirama muttered.

“But his little trick has weakened the spell enough that I can crack it like glass and get us in.”

“Good news!” Clapping his hands together once, he then gestured her back to the seemingly innocuous way forward. “Shall we, then?”

Kurenai nodded and got to work without making him wait. As she predicted, the spell shattered under one sharp blow to exactly the right spot and Hashirama was stepping past it almost before she gave him the all clear to do so.

Just beyond where the barrier had been the tunnel curved and Hashirama slowed his footsteps, signaling for the others to tread carefully behind him as he peeked around the bend ahead with every step. Slowly a larger open space opened up before him. It appeared completely empty until he finally moved far enough in that he was able to see the eastern wall.

Of all the things he expected to find, seeing Madara and Tobirama cuddled up together was not one of them. It actually took a full second of blank shock for his reason to kick in and remind him that last night there had been a blizzard, that neither of the men across the way were dressed for extended periods of time outdoors, and conclude that they had most likely huddled together for warmth. That didn’t make it any stranger to see the two of them getting along in any context.

Hashirama’s entourage scurried after him as he rushed across the snowy floor and dropped to his knees to look for a pulse, entirely casting aside the idea that he should have allowed Kurenai to check for illusions or other traps first. Strangely, neither of the men before him felt cold. In a cave so thickly coated with ice he would have expected to find their skin chilled – or at least Tobirama’s since Madara had his magic to warm him. They were both, in fact, the exact same temperature under his touch.

Skin temperature was hardly the most important thing on his mind, however. More urgent was seeing whether he could get them to wake up. Neither of their skin looked discolored so the chances that they had escaped hypothermia seemed pretty good but he was hardly a medical expert. Suddenly he felt stupid for not bringing one of his medi-mages along just in case; his own daughter would have been an excellent choice. Gently shaking Tobirama’s shoulder got no response when he tried and neither did shaking Madara’s. Slapping their cheeks did nothing but loll their heads to either side. With great concern he decided that doing this here was wasting time. It would be better for them to get out of the cold first and try to wake them later.

Pulling Tobirama towards himself, he gestured for Kurenai to help him break the death grip they had on each other’s hands. One or both of them seemed determined to cling, probably unconsciously worried about losing their digits to the cold, and it was making the efforts to help them quite difficult. Finally he managed to pry them loose and pull Tobirama away from Madara’s embrace.

He wasn’t prepared for his brother’s reaction.

 

-

 

Time might have passed. It was hard to think of the world outside, hard to concentrate on anything. Together they existed in a state of peace where nothing was wrong and nothing could ever go wrong. One being, one core of flowing magic, liquid fire that flowed through every vein in their two bodies to bring warmth and harmony. It felt as if they had always been this way and always would be. Surely they had always been one being, thoughts and sensations and memories shared, nothing to hide and no desire for anything else in the world but this perfect state of being to go on forever.

Something brushed against one of their four wrists but it was okay, they knew it would always be okay. Together they felt something touching their bodies but that was fine too. Nothing mattered but the euphoria of togetherness. Then that something began to pick at the places where their river converged, the weakest points in the connection that made them _them_ and finally they understood that something bad was happening. By then it was simply too late.

Tobirama came up screaming. Something was wrong but he didn’t know what; all he knew was that one moment he had been whole and the next he was torn from himself, lesser, a name is his head that he couldn’t remember forgetting. Where he should have felt the other half of himself there in his mind he found only echoing silence, only water where he should have also had the compliment of fire. Only two hands where he should have had four, only one heartbeat where he should have had two. Lonely in a way he could not identify. Everything about him was wrong, wrong, so very wrong.

And it hurt.

It took a while to even notice the voice trying to soothe him but even then it was a fight to recognize it past the haze of pain. Tobirama opened his eyes to see Madara’s body cradled in someone else’s arms – Hikaku, he recognized faintly in the back of his mind, though his identity was none of Tobirama’s concern at the moment. With one arm his reached out, desperate to reach Madara and unable to articulate why. Hands on his shoulders held him back.

“Shush, Tobi, it’s okay. I’ve got you. Big brother is here. We’ll take you back home now, okay?”

Tobirama whined low in the back of his throat and reached harder. He watched as Madara’s body was lifted and with every step away the pain in his soul grew and grew until it came echoing up his throat again, a garbled scream of protest.

“Whoa, hey, Tobi! What’s wrong? What is it?” Hands stroked his face but he shook them away.

“He’s in pain,” he gasped, unsure of how he knew but very sure it was the most important thing in the world that he stop it, more important even than his own pain. He felt almost as though his very essence had been pulled out of his body and yet to know that his other half…that Madara was in pain, it couldn’t be borne.

“Someone tell Hikaku to get back here.” At last he recognized the voice next to him as Hashirama. Having his brother there with him should have been a comfort. Tobirama had eyes only for the approaching body, limp where he hung in the strong arms of his distant cousin.

Weakly struggling against his own limbs, Tobirama reached out as best as he could. It quickly became clear that he didn’t have the strength to move himself and eventually Hashirama jumped in to help him sit up properly, nonplussed expression on his face just barely hiding the rabid curiosity underneath. He helped Tobirama lift one arm and instructed Hikaku to bring Madara close enough for them to touch.

A wave of relief and belonging washed over Tobirama the moment their hands connected. He was _whole_ again. Sinking in to blissful completion, they welcomed the darkness that rose up to take them away from that wretched cave.

The next time Tobirama became aware of the world he was in the infirmary with no memory of how he came to be there. His last coherent memories were of being cold, of Madara’s reluctant offer to warm him. After that there was some sort of hazy dream about not being whole, being torn apart at the very center of his existence, and for some reason Hashirama’s voice hovering over him with fruitless words of comfort. The whole thing was strange.

What was stranger was sitting upright to find his infirmary bed pushed up against the one next to it, his fingers woven in to Madara’s, and their hands tied together with what looked like a string of magic. If the exhaustion wasn’t messing with his senses too badly then the magic felt as though it originated from Tsunade, his precocious little niece, barely a century of years under her belt and already world-renowned in the magical communities for her advancements in the healing arts. He really hoped she had a good reason for tying him to…actually, once he stopped to think about it he found that he wasn’t nearly as upset as he should be.

Getting tied to Uchiha Madara should be his worst nightmare yet here he was feeling oddly relieved. Clearly something had gone terribly wrong.

Luckily he wasn’t left to stew in his own panic for long, the doors to the hall opening a moment later and several familiar faces waltzing in without so much as a single knock to make sure he was decent. One look at the shocked relief on his brother’s face when their eyes met and he decided that – just this once! – he could forgive such rudeness.

“You’re awake!” Hashirama threw himself across the room to pull Tobirama into a hug. In return he patted the man’s back with his one free hand.

“It would seem so. Also confused. If someone would kindly tell us what we’re doing strapped to Madara?”

“Uh…” Hashirama stared at him strangely and Tobirama couldn’t for the life of him understand why but he was distracted by Tsunade stomping up to him on those too-high heels of hers and bending down to look deeply in to his eyes.

“So I was right,” was all she said.

Falling back on one elbow to get some space between them, he asked, “Right about what?”

His niece straightened up to make room for Hashirama to lunge forward and dither around his brother as she spoke, the news she delivered just heavy enough that Tobirama didn’t even bother to protest Hashirama’s overbearing tendencies.

“Your condition is something I’ve only come across twice in my studies and the idea was entirely theoretical in both texts. Every time we tried to separate you from Professor Uchiha you both showed signs of extreme distress; a couple times it was so bad you would both seize or your vitals would drop. An examination of your bodies showed nothing suspicious but when we had some examine the flow of your magics…” She trailed off with a hesitant expression and Tobirama felt his heart beating in his throat.

“What? Spit it out, what did you find?”

“The two of you aren’t ‘the two of you’ anymore. Your magic and his have exactly the same signature now. I don’t know what you guys were up to in that cave but your core magics have merged in to one and from what we can tell, the pain of separation stems from both of you searching for the parts of yourself that are actually in someone else’s body now.”

Explanation finished, Tsunade propped both hands on her hips and let him have a minute to absorb everything she’d just said. The others followed suit. Even Hashirama stopped flapping around trying to make sure he really was okay and instead gently pet his hair to help keep him calm.

“That is the craziest bullshit we’ve ever heard,” he finally muttered.

“Brother.” Hashirama kept his tone low and soothing. “We had to tie your hands together so you’d stop rolling away from each other because every time you did…Tobi, the sounds you were making…” It was as horrifying as it was fascinating to watch him choke on his own words and turn away because elaborating on that was too difficult. _Him_. Hashirama, the man with so many emotions he’d cried during every speech he gave in his entire life, could not handle describing the screams of his own brother.

Tobirama turned his head to look at the man in the bed beside him. “We’re sorry.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was sorry about but he knew that Hashirama’s discomfort was his own fault and that had never sat well. At least, not when he hadn’t deliberately caused that discomfort himself with a prank or something of the like.

“Yeah, that’s another symptom,” Tsunade drawled. Tobirama looked up again with a questioning eyebrow.

“What is?”

“That thing you’re doing where you speak in the royal we.”

“We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Crying out in triumph, Tsunade pointed at him. “That! Right there! You said ‘we’ but it should have been ‘I’!”

Opening his mouth to refute her, Tobirama stopped dead. He had indeed just been about to say ‘No we didn’t’. Just because he had to admit that she was right didn’t mean he needed to prove her point for her.

His eyes were drawn back to Madara like a magnet to a lode stone while the others in the room began to chatter amongst themselves, speculations about why his subconscious speech had changed. All things considered he really should be more upset. For as long as they had known each other he and Madara had been like oil and water, unable to mix, forever clashing. He could easily admit that in most of those clashes he had taken shameless amusement from stoking the fire, both literal and proverbial.

Now here he was being told that the very core of his being had somehow melded with Madara’s and he found himself taking the news in a suspiciously calm manner, almost like his unconscious mind had already accepted it. It baffled him that they were even _capable_ of merging and yet when he thought of being one with Madara his entire being was suffused with such a feeling of _rightness_ that his mind fairly skittered away from the idea of being any other way. The logical part of his brain told him that this probably had something to do with one of those non-magical science principles, something about an object at rest wanting to stay there, and he decided that accepting that theory was probably safer than probing for deeper meanings.

More important was thinking about how they were going to deal with this situation. His mind absolutely refused to consider anything in regards to separation; would Madara feel the same? Something in his gut told him yes with such finality that he immediately moved on to the next issue. How were they supposed to live like this? Going through each day tethered to another body would impede quite a lot of things, from bathroom needs to the battle of his studies versus Madara’s classroom.

“This is going to get very interesting,” he muttered under the sounds of everyone else’s conversations.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Madara woke up Tobirama was certain he had a complete mental list of all the possible challenges they might be facing in the days ahead of them. The second that Madara became aware of the world again he realized that there was one significant thing he had failed to even consider as an option.

“He’s cold.” The thought occurred to him so suddenly he hardly realized he’d spoken out loud until Tsunade looked over from the bed of another unconscious patient she was tending to.

“Really? And how would you know?” she asked.

“We can feel it,” he said with a note of wonder in his voice. And it was true, dawning in the back of his mind was the vague sensation that his second body – and that right there was a whole new can of worms – was chilly. Tobirama yanked the blanket off his own mattress and pulled it over on to the other as best he could. As soon as he did so he felt the aimless gratitude of a sleepy mind that finds warmth without being conscious enough to understand its source.

Madara’s fingers tightened around his briefly, no signs of trying to get away. The closer he drew to actual consciousness the more Tobirama felt his sense of self blurring around the edges. What Madara felt he could feel and what Madara was thinking danced along the edges of his own thoughts, just close enough that he could push himself in to them if he so desired. Out of habit he asked himself why the hell he would want to know what Madara was thinking and almost immediately he berated himself for being a stuck up prick. Tobirama frowned.

“Well we don’t like that,” he murmured.

Relaying the same revelations to Madara as had been given to him upon waking turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic. Able to latch on to Tobirama’s calm state and subconsciously already aware of these things, he took the news with no more than a light frown and a distracted hum.

Having him awake also came with the unexpected boon of solving Tobirama’s ‘royal we’ problem as they both recovered their unconscious sense of self. The less they leaned towards that diaphanous line between their minds the more they were able to think in the singular. It was harder when they strayed towards each other, naturally trying to slide together as one person, but Hashirama was good enough to point out when they began to speak in ‘we’ and ‘us’ to warn them what was happening.

Other problems arose rather quickly when it came time to decide where they should stay for the foreseeable future. Obviously both of them wanted to stay in the comfort and familiarity of their own rooms – and even more interestingly they each yearned for both places at the same time, feeding off of each other’s desires until it was impossible to tell which of them wanted what. In the end Hashirama flipped a coin and shuffled them off to Tobirama’s rooms.

Something none of them, as reasonable and intellectual adults, thought to consider was what hundreds of students might take away from seeing their professor and the infamous forever-but-technically-not-a-student walking through the hallways hand in hand. It took several waggled eyebrows and over a dozen outbursts of whispering before mortification shot through their bodies as though the thought had occurred to them at exactly the same time. Letting go was a non-option, however, so they did their best to close their ears to the fast moving gossip about a teacher-student relationship, despite the fact that Tobirama only technically qualified as a student because Hashirama let him stay there without forcing him to become a professor.

If he hadn’t enrolled in any classes for the last three years and he refused the teaching positions every time they were offered to him then he needed _some_ sort of excuse to stay. He’d have been kicked out by the Board of Magical Education a long time ago if he weren’t related to the Headmaster.

Of all the small mercies they didn’t expect, Tobirama’s quarters were at least closer since they were located in a quiet corridor just passed the student dormitories but a floor below where the professors resided. Twin sighs of relief escaped their lips once they had a solid door closed between them and the rest of the world. As one they turned to survey the room before them with a critical eye.

To Tobirama it looked like home, familiar books stacked in patterns that would look like nonsense to anyone else but made sense to him and him alone, ingredients for his elixirs balanced on every surface and summoning crystals dotted in random places, the occasional personal touch present in the form of one of Hashirama’s sculptures and that sword he once wrestled from a basilisk. Even the dust sprinkled deliberately in certain places to mark whether his things had been messed with was a sight for sore eyes. Were he alone he would have taken a deep breath and allowed himself to sink in to the knowledge awaiting him.

But he wasn’t alone. He was held back from diving headfirst in to the closest tome he could reach by the sheer exasperation he could feel drifting over through his link to Madara. Apparently his companion found this level of chaos to be stifling instead of inspiring, their bodies tensing with minor claustrophobia. Tobirama wrinkled his nose. It had taken a long time to organize his belongings properly and he was loathe to disturb them now.

“Shall we go through to the other rooms?” he asked.

With no one else living near him and his unique status as perpetual researcher he had quite a lot more space to spread himself out than most others in the university. Madara held his arms close to his body so as not to upset any of the carefully stacked books around them and Tobirama was almost knocked off his feet when he realized why, that Madara was feeding in to _his_ reverence for his possessions and probably unconsciously treating them like they were his own. Fascinating. That was definitely something they would need to explore.

The next room over was much more tidy and excluded any strategically placed dust, much to Madara’s obvious relief. This was where he most often came to read, although the compartmentalizing part of his brain refused to see it as a place to store anything and so the tomes he read from went back in to the other room when not in use. He wasn’t at all surprised to see Madara’s attention hone in on his favorite chair.

“We can’t both sit in it,” he muttered dryly.

“Right. Well we shouldn’t both have to do anything. I mean, I’m not saying…”

Madara trailed off but Tobirama waved him onwards impatiently, already aware of what he was trying to say. Awkward as it was to admit, it was obvious that neither of them were willing to even think of the option to separate entirely. Their cores had merged so completely it wasn’t likely anything could separate them even if they wanted that. Even other magical folk wouldn’t truly be able to understand what they were going through. The only way Tobirama could think to describe it would be to say that they now only had one soul to share between their two bodies and it was as thrilling to think about as it was terrifying. All the hatred that he had once carried for the man at his side had been replaced with nothing more than the natural and instinctive desire to stay whole, uninjured, just as any other human would want.

“Anyway. I’m not saying that. But it would be much more convenient if we didn’t have to be leashed together all the time. You will agree, I think, that your _darling_ niece only wanted us to stay in the infirmary for the rest of the day because she wanted to see what would happen the first time one of us had to piss.”

“She’s always had a very strange sense of humor,” Tobirama mused.

“I don’t like being the butt of a joke.”

“But you make such a _nice_ butt.” As soon as the words were out they both paused, Tobirama’s jaw snapping shut. He had the distinct impression that he’d been trying to say two things at once there and only one of those points had originated from himself.

Letting the moment slide, Madara cleared his throat. “Whatever. Let’s just see what happens with this because I really don’t want to take you to the bathroom with me.”

“As much as the very thought horrifies me as well, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea just yet. Even while unconscious our reactions to separation were worrisome.” Tobirama twisted his mouth to one side in thought. A moment later he frowned because he’d never made that expression before in his life and Madara was mirroring it back at him. “Never mind. Perhaps you’re right.”

“Oh? So y-”

“Don’t. You wouldn’t let me say ‘I told you so’ before, what makes you think I’ll let you say it now?”

Madara pouted but conceded the point.

Ignoring the squashy armchair they both wanted to sit in, they stepped over to the couch instead and sat together to think over how to go about this little experiment, trying to convince themselves and each other that they actually wanted to do it. Privacy would indeed be nice in certain situations but the draw to stay together went beyond instinctual. It was primal. Eventually it was Tobirama pointing out that letting go of each other’s hands didn’t mean they had to completely separate, just that it would be nice to have access to their own limbs. Madara agreed with relief obvious in his eyes.

“Yes, right, so if I touch you somewhere else then we should be fine.”

“Exactly.” Tobirama nodded decisively.

He waited until Madara had shuffled across the seat cushions to press their hips together before very slowly and very carefully unfolding one finger at a time. Both of them tensed as they edged their palms apart only to relax when absolutely nothing happened. Evidently they had been worried over nothing. Feeling a little ridiculous that they had let themselves get so worked up about this, Tobirama huffed and moved to get off the couch.

Immediately he fell to his knees with his head cradled in both hands, unable to process the sheer agony ripping through his body. No words could ever possibly describe the pain, his very soul itself torn in to pieces and every one of those pieces burning, tearing, grinding, shattering, all at once. His mind screamed until he couldn’t tell whether the sound was coming from his own throat or from behind him and he had no idea how to stop it until suddenly the world fell quiet again.

Madara’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly, was the only thing anchoring him to the earth in that moment. Panting like he’d run for several miles, Tobirama fell back in to the man’s knees and marveled that he’d managed to avoid falling off the couch too in his lunge to bring them together again.

“Right,” he whispered. “So that didn’t work.”

“Clearly not!” Underneath the attempt at a good snarl Madara sounded just as breathless as him despite the sparks lingering in his hair.

“New plan: you’re just going to have to suck it up and piss where I can hear you. Disgusting but necessary, it seems.” Tobirama ran one hand through his hair and settled further between Madara’s knees.

Then he jolted to one side and almost separated them again when the man shifted in place to harp down at him. “What kind of scientist are you? You’re not supposed to give up after one experiment!”

“I’m not a scientist, Madara. That is a non-magical word and I think we’ll both agree you don’t want me to prove I have magic right now. I am, first and foremost, a scholar. We had an idea and it ended with great pain. My new idea is maybe not feeling that amount of pain again in the near future!” He would have jabbed an elbow backwards in to the idiot behind him if he weren’t so comfortable in his current position.

He was a little amazed when Madara failed to offer some sort of comeback and for a moment he entertained the incredible notion that he’d actually won the fight that easily. Then he felt thoughts not his own pressing in against him and frowned as he danced around the edges of the muddled confusion and uncertainty his companion was experiencing.

“Was it something I said?”

“Did you just call me by my name?” Madara asked, wiping away the humorous grin trying to form on Tobirama’s face.

“Sweet spirits I did. You’ve infected me. _You_ don’t think of yourself as a pea-brained bastard so now I can’t either! This is intolerable!”

“Hey!”

Offense suffused his entire mind, so strong was Madara’s reaction, and Tobirama heaved a sigh of irritation. “Among other things that are also intolerable. I have to pee.”

Madara shuddered.

The next few days were dotted with similar experiments, most of which ended in exactly the same mixture of pain and desperation to reunite. When Hashirama stopped by to check on them they absolutely refused to answer any questions about what was ‘really so bad’ about being stuck together. Apparently certain parts of their situation hadn’t occurred to their Headmaster and neither of them were really jumping at the chance to explain it to him.

On the fourth day they had a breakthrough at last, though neither of them realized it at first. Being forced to sleep in the same bed had led to all sorts of things they both agreed to never speak of and waking up with Madara’s head tucked under Tobirama’s chin, warm and solid and perfectly shaped like he was meant to fit there, was far from the first one. It even took a few minutes for both of them to work their way out of the haze that always fell over their collective consciousness whenever they were wrapped up too tightly, minds working together in such harmony it was difficult to remember why they shouldn’t.

They both came back to themselves at the same time and, upon realizing the compromising position they were in, gave matching grunts of disgust and rolled away in opposite directions.

“I never cuddle,” Madara insisted. “This is your doing.”

“You can’t lie to me, remember? I can feel it when you lie.”

“Ugh, fine, but I would never cuddle with the likes of you! Even if you are somehow me now…sort of. This whole thing still hurts my brain when I try to think about it.”

Tobirama sniffed. He was on the verge of some sort of acerbic comment about how little Madara’s brain ever worked but held back, rather upset by the fact that he now knew how untrue that was. Having free tickets in to each other’s heads had led to all sorts of insights, chief among them being that Madara wasn’t nearly as stupid as Tobirama always assumed and that Tobirama wasn’t half as unfeeling as he preferred the world to think.

Such revelations had been uncomfortable on both sides and were quickly added to the ever-growing pile of things they agreed not to talk about. At least on that they were in accord.

Instead of the snarky comment he’d been gearing up for Tobirama sat up and stretched his arms above his head. There was no pretending his thoughts had been headed anywhere else but he did have enough dignity not to bring it up and start an unnecessary fight. Only after he’d brought his arms back down, one of them scratching at his chest, did he realize that his head was…oddly quiet. Where he would normally feel irritation or some other form of thought process from his companion there was a strange and worrisome sort of vacancy.

“How did you do that?” Madara demanded in a breathy voice.

“I’m not sure what I even did,” Tobirama admitted. When he looked down, however, he could see right away what the man was referring to.

They weren’t touching anymore. Still tucked in to the same bed, their bodies were a mere couple of inches apart with no physical contact at any point and yet there were no signs of pain. Madara slowly pushed himself up to rest on his elbows while Tobirama tried to work out how he felt about this.

“Unexpected,” he said. “Convenient, though. It will probably be good for us to get a bit of distance.”

“Right, yes. Good for us.” Madara cleared his throat and refused to let their eyes meet. Looking away, Tobirama pretended he didn’t understand why.

“Well, it looks like we’ll be able to go about things a little differently today.”

Swinging his legs out, he made to get up and walk over to the dresser to pull out a fresh set of clothing, his first idea being that it would be nice to finally shower alone without someone standing just outside the curtain with their eyes closed, hand pressed against his back so he could wash his hair. Those plans were thrown out the window when he stood up and immediately collapsed as an all too familiar pain washed over him. From the mattress above him he could hear Madara whine.

Just as he had been all the other times they attempted to separate Tobirama was immediately filled with an all-consuming need to get back to his other half. Everything in the world felt wrong as he forced his body on to its knees so he could crawl back on to the mattress and reach across it the find Madara’s hand. The moment their skin connected they both gasped with relief.

“Alright. Nothing really so different.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Madara snarled.

“You are absolutely welcome. Happy to have provided my services.”

“Facetious,” the man hissed.

Tobirama stared up at the ceiling and held on tighter to the hand grasping at his own. “Sometimes,” he agreed.

“But you weren’t touching me! We were fine!”

“I think it’s best if we take things slowly. Think of it like a new muscle that we need to stretch little by little until we learn the really flexible moves.” He grinned at the wave of prudish disgust from his partner, proud of himself for working an innuendo in to such a serious conversation.

“Just for that I’m sending a note to Hashirama that I’ll be attending my own class today.”

Shooting upright in the bed, Tobirama looked down at the other man with outrage twisting his expression. “You most certainly will not!”

“Well I need to get back to my job sometime or eventually they’ll stop paying me.” Madara struggled upright as well. “So far we’ve stayed holed up in _your_ rooms so that you can get lost in _your_ research and the only contact we’ve had with the outside world has been _your_ relatives. I’m going mad! You’re not the only one who would like to get back a bit of normalcy!”

Brows pulled down so far they nearly overshadowed his eyes, Tobirama hoped his glare at least balanced out the abrupt shock he was probably giving off in waves. The last few days had been sprinkled with a number of discovering about each other and he faced each one of them with a vague sense of betrayal. How dare Madara slowly grow more human in his eyes? What made it worse was being forced to recognize that he was being selfish and inconsiderate – and actually care about it. He very much did not appreciate being forced to see things from Madara’s point of view.

Chief among the reactions lingering just behind that malleable wall between their conscious minds was the sadness and longing that came from not seeing someone for too long; Madara missed his students, apparently. Tobirama had always assumed that his nemesis took a teaching job because it was easy and secure and it provided living quarters as well. Finding out that he actually liked his job sort of threw half of Tobirama’s impressions of the man out of whack.

Madara was supposed to hate kids so that Tobirama could hate him in return. It was irritating to find out the opposite was true and find himself ever so slightly _endeared_ to a man he’d always disliked.

“No classes,” Tobirama grumbled at last. “But I guess we can get out of here for a little while. Where else do you want to go?”

“Literally anywhere but here. I want to see something other than these walls. We could have lunch with you brother or something, I guess.” Shuffling around, Madara pulled them both off the bed and headed for the bathroom so he could perform his morning ablutions. Tobirama hissed at him.

“One would think you’d gotten tired of him too.”

Madara conceded that point. While neither of them had overly large social circles and they were used to seeing a lot of Hashirama, they were also both used to having other people around occasionally to break up the madness a bit. Seeing anyone else would be a relief after dealing with only him and each other for so long. The only problem was that there really wasn’t anyone else in the castle that either of them were very interested in going to visit.

“What if we went to the library?” Madara asked suddenly. Hand reaching for his toothbrush, Tobirama paused like he’d seen a ray of hope.

“The library?”

“Yeah, it’s perfect. I can put out word that I’m willing to work with any students who need it and you can do your…whatever it is you do with your books. Make love to them with your eyes or something.” He snickered at his own terrible joke.

Rather than reprimand him Tobirama nodded slowly.

“I think that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“Wait, seriously? You’re not going to fight me on an idea I came up with? Even a little?” Madara hummed thoughtfully. “Strangely I’m a little disappointed.”

Tobirama snorted and refused to comment. He didn’t want to piss the man off and ruin this chance to go visit his favorite place in the whole world. Whatever other problems existed in his life they always had a way of not mattering as soon as he stepped in to that glorious haven, the home of all knowledge, books as far as the eye can see and all of them patiently waiting for his attention. Maybe the day hadn’t started off as well as he’d thought but it was certainly looking up now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost forgot to update this week, whoops!

As soon as he stepped foot in the library Tobirama took a deep breath in and held it, savoring one of his favorite smells in the whole world. Madara eyed him strangely and gave a little sniff of his own. Underneath the dust kicked up by dozens of bodies shuffling around there hung the scent of old parchment, ink, leather bindings, the stink of the glue from cheaply made tomes. If peace and relaxation had a scent it would be this. Already Tobirama could feel the tension sliding away from him and he deliberately ignored the look Madara was giving him as he dragged them towards his favorite table in the far back corner where most people knew better than to disturb him. Just because he’d agreed to let Madara do his own thing with whatever students found him here didn’t mean he had to make it easy for them to do so. One or two at a time was one thing but he was really hoping this didn’t turn in to a full blown class right next to him.

On their way back to the table he snatched a few books off the shelves, handing most of them over to his partner without thinking much about it. He only had one hand available to him at the moment and it was busy pulling down new worlds to explore. Madara only really seemed to realize that he was placidly accepting them all when the pile grew so high it obstructed his vision and the weight of them all became painful where their hands were clasped under one side of the stack.

“I think that’s enough for now, don’t you?” he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

“Perhaps. If I want more later I can always drag you along.” Tobirama snagged some of them back and together they trundled on over to the table he liked best.

As soon as they settled in to adjacent chairs Tobirama disappeared behind two books at once, furrowing his brows and determined to ignore the adolescent boy he could already see approaching them. He hadn’t expected anyone to find them so quickly, although he supposed they hadn’t made much of an effort to hide their entrance.

“Uchiha-sensei, it’s good to see that you’re okay! You’ve been out of class for days but no one will say why!” The boy even sounded earnest in his worry. Madara preened next to him while Tobirama rolled his eyes in disbelief.

“I’m fine, Kiba. Where’s Akamaru?”

A quite _woof_ caught Tobirama’s attention, popping his head over the stack of books to see a cute little puppy grinning happily from his place inside the student’s book bag. He preferred cats himself but dogs had their own allure in some cases. The one hiding there was certainly cute with his tiny pink tongue and his floppy ears, not the sort of puppy one turned down a chance to pet.

“Don’t tell, please,” Kiba begged them. “He’s not supposed to be in here but he promised not to chew on anything! He just stays in my bag!”

“Familiars _are_ supposed to stay out of study areas,” Madara reminded the boy. Kiba drooped sadly in time with his dog. “I won’t tell if you let me hold him for a bit, though.”

“Alright!”

Tobirama did a quick mental check to make sure his jaw hadn’t dropped entirely off his face as Madara maneuvered their hands apart while pressing their sides together so he could accept the little puppy and greet it cheerfully. Akamaru, as was apparently its name, greeted him back with another polite _woof_ and a few licks up the center of his face. Instead of getting mad or jerking away in disgust Madara only chuckled and settled the pup in his lap for a good scratch behind the ears.

It was at that point that Tobirama began to question if this was really Madara that he’d been bound to or just a really close lookalike. Where was the uptight fool who never took so much as a step out of bounds or did anything unexpected? What happened to the man whose temper flared up at the slightest hint that someone might be breaking a rule? It was like he was holding a complete stranger’s thigh.

Which was kind of creepy and not a mental image he wanted to focus on.

He noted Madara giving him a look from the corner of one eye that would have been inscrutable if not for the connection between their minds. Even then it took a minute or so to work through the confusion and unravel everything, from the slight offense at being assumed so uptight to the mild smugness at having disproved such an assumption and even the mostly suppressed happiness to have Tobirama recognize that he wasn’t _that_ bad of a person. That last bit they both ignored.

Despite his insistence that he would be spending their little outing doing his own thing, Tobirama found himself ignoring the book propped up in front of him while instead he observed the way Madara interacted with his students. He was a far cry from the warm paternal type but neither was he cold and aloof the way most of the other teachers assumed him to be. When one of the little buggers stopped by with a question he answered it with no sugar coating, explaining things further when they asked, and although he never held back on telling them they had something wrong he was never cruel about it either.

As much as Tobirama hated to admit it, the man was apparently a descent teacher.

Over an hour after they sat down he finally managed to peel his eyes away from the disturbingly heartwarming sight of Madara hunched over a half finished essay with a tearful young girl and pointing out all the parts where she was on the right track. Clearing his throat as quietly as possible, he forced himself to focus on the book in front of him and not the feelings of pride rolling off the man at his side. Giving his attention to some ancient dead man’s account of a water based summoning he may or may not have gotten to work one time was _clearly_ a better use of his time than speculating over how all of those adolescents could simply ignore it whenever their professor’s fingers began to smoke with frustration. Much more interesting, obviously. It meant nothing that it took forever to convince himself to concentrate on the proper thing.

Like always, once he’d actually managed to sink in to the texts he was reading time seemed to pass him by in a great wave without him noticing in the slightest. It felt like only five minutes later that he felt a shoulder bumped pointedly against his own and resurfaced to discover that he’d gone through four different books as easily as turning to the next page.

“We should eat,” Madara said. When Tobirama looked around there were no students in sight and Madara’s body was turned at such an angle that it looked like he’d been reading the book over Tobirama’s shoulder.

“The hell are you doing?”

“Shut up! You were so absorbed and you felt so happy reading it, I just wanted to see what was so interesting!” He leaned back in his chair with a scowl but it did very little to cover his embarrassment at being caught. Tobirama wondered what was so bad about giving in and finally understanding the draw of research but he didn’t ask. Understanding this man’s brain seemed like a good step on the path to crazy town and he was already farther down that road than he would have liked.

Now that it had been brought to his attention, though, he realized that he was actually starving. Getting some food sounded like a marvelous plan.

“What time is it?”

“Almost noon,” Madara said, checking the shadows coming in from a nearby window.

“If we hurry we can be back in my rooms by the time Hashirama gets there to deliver us some food.” Convincing his brother to hand deliver their meals until they figured out what to do about the whole stuck together situation had actually been pretty easy. All he’d had to do was point out that it would a good excuse for them all to spend some quality time together. Unfortunately for his brother Tobirama had also already come up with a backup plan for sending the man away when he got tired of the company. A headmaster shouldn’t take too much time away from his work, after all, and he delighted in pointing that out every time.

“You, uh, I don’t suppose you were planning to check that one out?” Madara asked. When Tobirama lifted an eyebrow at him he balked. “What! It was _interesting_ , okay? So sue me!”

He did indeed check that one out, along with a couple others that covered similar subjects, but not without projecting as much cocky amusement as he could. Still, Madara helped him carry them back home so he refrained from making any comments out loud.

The two of them had just enough time to find the right spot in Tobirama’s chaotically organized front room to store the new books before Hashirama arrived with a bright smile and three trays of food.

“Room service!” he called out cheerfully.

“Go service your wife,” Madara snapped back reflexively. Tobirama scrunched his face with disgust and shoved his partner against the wall.

“I didn’t need to picture that!”

“Well I didn’t mean it like that!”

Using the excuse of maintaining contact to keep the other shoved against the wall, Tobirama scoffed. “Of course you didn’t, you’re a prude.”

“Hey! I- I have dirty thoughts sometimes!”

“Oh sweet spirits, I didn’t need to picture that either.” He sniggered as Madara shrieked and squirmed with embarrassment under his hold, smoke all but pouring out from the tips of his fingers, while Hashirama hovered by the doorway with a sad little pout on his lips.

“And here I thought you guys had started getting along better,” he mourned.

Tobirama ignored him.

Not wanting to upset his carefully organized mess, he let Madara stand up away from the wall and – after dodging a half-hearted revenge swipe – led them all in to the next room so they could eat lunch. Hashirama had their food packed up in neat little bento boxes that he had clearly sat down and made from the food provided in the common dining hall. Working in sync without having to talk it through, Tobirama perched himself on the arm of his favorite chair while Madara sank down in to the cushions, their bodies connected but their hands free to reach for their meals.

In a show of incredible restraint, Hashirama managed to stay quiet and observe the two of them until everyone had taken at least a few bites each. Halfway through a mouthful of fried chicken he leaned back in his own seat and tilted his head to look at them from a different angle.

“You know, I’m surprised at you Tobi.” His words had Tobirama pausing with food raised halfway to his mouth.

“Don’t call me that. Surprised why?”

“Because you’ve been finishing all the food that I’ve been bringing every time. I only just thought about it now but I know usually you bring a bit of food back here and leave it out for those raccoons that live outside your window. Did they leave? I thought you said you were trying to help them through the winter!”

Trying very hard to convince the ground to open up and swallow him, Tobirama ignored the stare burning in to the side of his head as he leaned forward to hiss at his brother, “They were _squirrels_ , not little trash goblins, now _shut your face_.”

Hashirama ducked his head like a chastised child.

“Now hold on a damn second.” Madara set his bento down and Tobirama could almost feel the smirk on his face through their link. “You? Feeding the little squirrels outside?”

“You can shut your face too.”

“What, were they helping you with an experiment or something?” He scoffed at his own joke until Hashirama tossed a chopstick at him, sending Tobirama in a coughing fit when it pinged off the center of Madara’s forehead.

“Don’t be mean to my brother! He’s nice! They were little baby squirrels and Tobi was worried that they weren’t going to make it through the season so he was leaving food out for them to stock up for the winter!”

Tobirama immediately stopping choking with laughter, mirth giving way to an embarrassed frown. “Brother! I said shut up! And stop calling me that!”

Snatching up the weaponized chopstick, he threw it back at his sibling and huffed irritably when the man dodged just in time. No one was ever supposed to know about the squirrels. They weren’t important. They were no one else’s business! Hashirama had no right to out him like that right in front of Madara who now had one hand in front of his mouth to cover the sight of his half chewed food while he laughed.

“Aww, has the cold hearted man gone soft?” he teased.

“Madara! I said don’t be mean to my brother!”

Picking out a piece of chicken from his bento, Tobirama threw that too. “Don’t you have work to do, brother? Go bury yourself in paperwork or something. And clean up the chicken!”

“But you threw it at me!” Hashirama sniffled but he did still lean over to pick up the chicken that had just bounced off his shoulder. “Why are both of you always so mean to me? I just wanted to come hang out for a bit! I mean, _yes_ , I should be working on the admission slips for the next semester but still! So cruel!”

His feet shuffled on his way to the door but it wasn’t enough to make either of them feel bad for sending him away. After seeing him three times a day for several days in a row they had certainly spent enough time together not to feel guilty over cutting one lunch short. They both knew he’d be over it in less than five minutes anyway, off to find some other excuse to avoid the work he should be doing.

Alone again, Tobirama avoided looking down at his partner and considered the irony that they had been so looking forward to some kind of company and still ended up chasing away the one person always willing to provide it. Madara pressed at the barrier between their thoughts, the feeling of him still heavy with amused disbelief, driving Tobirama to concentrate as hard as he could on the bento in his lap. Chicken had never been his favorite but it was better than getting made fun of for having a soft spot for animals.

They were defenseless! And tiny! Only a monster would hate little creatures like that. Evidently Madara had thought him a monster but it was hard to find that offensive when he’d thought the same in return until recently. Being wrong was the worst.

“I think that’s the record for the fastest we’ve been able to chase him off,” his partner said out of the blue.

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Should I be saying something else?”

When Tobirama peeked down Madara was looking back up at him with a knowing light in his eyes, more than aware that he was waiting to be made fun of.

“Just shut up.”

“Always putting your best foot forward,” Madara snickered.

By now Tobirama had learned enough about the man beside him to know that if he said anything more he would just be asking for trouble and, while that normally wouldn’t bother him, he had never been a big fan of setting himself in the line of fire. It would be best to just eat his meal quietly and let them both go on about their day.

After lunch they spent the rest of the afternoon doing more tests trying to figure out the exact limit of how far apart they could separate now without pain and for how long. For the first couple of hours they only managed an inch or so for a couple of minutes at a time and always they needed a little while of solid contact to recover from it. Mostly they filled those stretches by sitting together and devouring one of the library books. After a while, though, they managed to stretch the distance to almost two feet and last for nearly ten minutes. It wasn’t much but for two people who had spent the past _forever_ holding hands it was like a taste of freedom.

Hours after he had left with his tail between his legs Hashirama returned bearing three dinners and a smile.

“Guess what? I went back to my office and Mito was already there working on the admission slips! Isn’t that amazing? I just don’t know what I would do without her.” For a few seconds he was gone in to dreamland and Tobirama used that time to swap their meals around so he got the larger portion.

“Drown under your own responsibilities?” he suggested, bringing his sibling back to earth. Madara offered him a fist to pound before opening his own food.

“Tobi–”

“No!”

“Stop being mean to your big brother. I promise I helped her as soon as I saw that she’d started the work herself! It’s not like I actually just sit back and let her do all my work for me all the time. That would just be…well. We’d fight for sure.” Hashirama shuddered at the very thought – and rightfully so. Mito made an imposing figure even when she was in a good mood; when angered she was terrifying.

Half the meal passed by while all three of them were busy reliving their worst nightmares, all of which featured an angry Mito. The silence lasted until Tobirama stood up to brush the crumbs off his lap and Hashirama gasped with shock when he saw the lack of contact between them.

“Oh! Does this mean you two are all better now?” he asked.

“What? No.” Tobirama pinched his lips together disapprovingly. “Did you not listen when your daughter explained what happened to us? This isn’t something that’s going to ‘get better’ as you say.”

“But you guys aren’t touching! So does that mean everything is back to normal?”

Madara scoffed. “Afraid not. I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to normal, per se, but we do have a bit of leeway now and I must say it’s nice to have my own person all to myself again.”

Despite the confidence in his expression and the complete relaxation in the way he was sitting, Tobirama only needed one look at his partner to realize that the man was lying. He refrained from calling him out, however, because that would mean drawing attention to the fact that he felt the same way. Freedom was the jewel they had spent every day chasing after since this whole fiasco began and now that they had it they didn’t like it.

Freedom meant being apart and it was as wonderful as it was terrible. The more Tobirama learned about the man at his side the harder it was to keep insisting they hated each other. Irritating he might be and rough around the edges but not nearly as bad as assumed. Antagonistic and snarky for sure. Heartless dick not so much. Getting some space in between them at last was great when Tobirama thought about all the times one of them was restless and wanted to pace but the other didn’t. It lost a lot of its shine when he thought about how if they kept getting _more_ space Madara could eventually move back in to his own rooms, a subject neither of them had even bothered to bring up since that first day.

“Oi, are you listening?” Tobirama blinked. He had not, in fact, been listening. Had not even been aware the conversation continued after he got lost inside his own morbid thoughts.

“Did I miss something important?” he asked instead of admitting to anything. Madara snorted but Hashirama forgave him with an easy smile.

“Well Madara was saying how nice it was to get out and see something other than these rooms for a change and we started talking about things that could get you guys out again. Just for a little while! I know how much neither of you want people staring and wondering why you’re holding hands.” Something in Hashirama’s smile looked hopeful for a few terrible seconds until Tobirama glared hard enough to make it go away again.

“Go on…”

Waving his friend off, Madara took up the recap. “I told him I was anxious to get back to class and he suggested you sit in with me. You wouldn’t have to do anything and you could sit at my desk where we would be close enough to touch; I’m sure we can manage to be subtle about it.”

“About as subtle as your hair,” Tobirama snapped. Then he wrinkled his nose and grumbled, “Habit. Sorry. That’s an interesting idea, actually.” It would be fascinating to compare how different the man was when faced with dozens of students at once rather than one on one, if his lectures were as boring as Tobirama remembered from when he took the class. If he tried very hard he might be able to convince himself that was the only reason he was agreeing to this.

“Excellent! If it becomes a regular thing maybe Tobi can be your teacher’s assistant! Oh, that would just be so cute!” Hashirama clasped his hands together with joy – then yelped when Tobirama leaned over to shove him sideways.

“Not likely.”

When he sat back down Madara was staring at him with a worried expression. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“I – what?”

“You said ‘as subtle as my hair’, what’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, I guess? It’s just…puffy. All that volume, it basically arrives everywhere five minutes before the rest of you does. I’d ask if you brush it but I know you do.” Tobirama lifted one eyebrow in judgment as Madara patted the sides of his head anxiously. He would never understand why anyone bothered to grow their hair out. After spending his childhood watching Hashirama nearly choke to death every time he forgot to braid his hair before bed Tobirama had decided that he would never grow his own out, not even as long as his shoulders. How Madara avoided the same fate was a mystery.

“Of course I brush my hair! _You_ brushed my hair _for me_ yesterday!” Madara crossed his arms in offense and turned away. It would have been more believable if he hadn’t then leaned back in to Tobirama’s side like an angry girlfriend desperate for attention.

Hashirama watched them with wide eyes and a smile that could not spell anything good.

“Brother…you brush his hair for him?”

“It was only a couple of times!” Tobirama protested. “And only because he was too lazy to do it for himself and I couldn’t stand the rat’s nest!”

“That is just _so sweet_ of you! Aw, you guys really are getting along better!” Clasping his hands together again, Hashirama beamed like the annoying little sunshine he was, determined to find any excuse to shine.

With their minds melded the way they were Madara and Tobirama were able to look at him in perfect sync, wrinkle their noses, and grumble, “Ugh.”

Then they both turned away in silent agreement to ignore him for the next few minutes until he apologized for getting unnecessarily mushy. After that he made sure not to mention anything about how much nicer they were treating each other and instead started chattering about who had been covering Madara’s classes while he was away and how happy the students would be to see him back.

Used to spending most of his days alone with ink and paper, Tobirama eventually checked out of the conversation and let the two best friends carry on without him, subtly dragging one of the books towards him that they hadn’t had time to put away when Hashirama showed up. Neither of them seemed to notice when he cracked it open across his lap but before he could get lost in the knowledge awaiting him he peeked over at Madara with his eyes narrowed curiously.

Hopefully Madara wasn’t paying enough attention to the link between them to feel how interested he actually was in going to sit in on the man’s class. After learning so many new things about a man he once thought he understood inside and out, Tobirama found his attention piqued.

What else did he not know about Uchiha Madara?


	5. Chapter 5

“Can you brush my hair for me?”

Tobirama paused in buttoning up his shirt to give the man on his bed a flat look. “What?”

“I said can you brush my hair for me? I want to look at least halfway presentable and it always looks better when you do it. If I pretend to be polite and say please will you do it?”

“One of these days I’m going to invent a spell that will brush your hair for you. Levitation or something. No, wait, I hate levitation spells. They’re so finicky.” Snatching the brush being wiggling enticingly under his nose, he asked, “Why do you even care what you look like? They’re just dumb adolescents.”

With a satisfied smile Madara turned away from him and settled in to a cross-legged position.

“It doesn’t hurt to take a little extra care with one’s appearance,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”

“Are you calling me a mess?” Tobirama demanded. Just for that he made sure to catch a knot in the thick chuck of locks within his grasp and pull hard. Madara gurgled out a protest.

“Careful with that! I was not calling you a mess!”

Scowling, Tobirama let it slide. He wondered if Madara had noticed the same thing he did when they woke up that morning. The longer they were able to stay apart the less he seemed to be able to sense what the other was thinking and that bothered him more than it should. If anything he should have been celebrating getting a little more privacy back but somehow he just felt oddly alone. It was, embarrassingly, a relief every time they had to touch again and he could once more feel Madara just on the other side of that thin wall between their thoughts.

Pulling the brush a little more carefully – he didn’t really enjoy the echoes of pain their bond fed through to him, after all – Tobirama sat quietly and listened to Madara rambling on about his lesson plans for the day. He didn’t have a lot of opinions to give other than admitting that a lot of it sounded quite boring to him. But then anything that involved sitting still and being lectured on a subject he had already studied would always sound boring to him.

When Madara finally announced that he was satisfied with his own appearance Tobirama nodded and stood up.

“Finally. Now turn around so I can change out of my sleep pants.”

“At least I down have to hold your hand and close my eyes anymore.” Madara turned away as asked and pulled the notes Hashirama had sent over in to his lap.

Tobirama scoffed. Now that was a bit of separation he actually didn’t mind. His partner was right that those first couple of days learning how to function when they had to stay attached were mortifying. Tossing on a pair of pants to match the button down shirt he’d already changed in to, he paused and looked down at himself with a frown.

“I look fine, right?” he asked. Madara was smirking when he turned around.

“Who’s worrying about their appearances now?”

“You got in to my head!” Tobirama reached over to tug on a lock of that perfectly brushed hair. “I can’t help it! We’re rubbing off on each other more and more with every day. Next thing you know we’ll show up somewhere in matching outfits talking in unison. Actually, can we do that? I want to freak out Hashirama.”

Madara rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, though when Tobirama dropped a hand on his shoulder he could feel that the man was at least a little intrigued by the idea.

Since it was well past breakfast by the time they left home there weren’t actually many people around for the first few minutes of their walk. The residential areas were barren, anyone not currently sitting in their first period class probably still sleeping or just getting up, so the two of them held hands with the assurance that there was no one there to see and start rumors from it. It wasn’t until they passed the residential hallways and turned in to the wing where the classrooms began that they let go, instead walking so closely their arms brushed on nearly every step. Still a bit suspicious looking but not enough to confirm any of the ridiculous rumors that neither of them had been seen in days because they were on their _honeymoon_.

As if that would ever happen.

The twenty minutes it took to get to the right classroom were mostly spent in silence, both of them trying their hardest not to make eye contact with anyone wearing that weird hunger in their face people get when they’re trying to confirm something they think they already know. Madara did nod to some of the students that called out to him. Tobirama didn’t much bother looking around; the only people who ever waved to him were Hashirama, Mito, or his cousin Touka who had left the university after one year of classes, declaring them much too boring. He would have been bothered except that he much preferred it that way. Socializing had never been his strong suit.

Despite knowing intellectually that Madara’s students had missed him, they were both startled to open the door and find several dozen faces staring back at them with brilliant smiles and neatly folded hands, every one of them with their textbooks out and placed at the top left corner of their desks. It was nothing short of surreal.

“Students or thralls?” Tobirama muttered out the corner of his mouth, shrinking away from all the creepy eyes focused on them. Madara grunted and turned to scowl at him.

“They are not thralls,” he hissed quietly. “A bit odd, though, they’re not usually this well behaved.”

One of the nearby students overheard them, apparently.

“We thought we’d surprise you, Uchiha-sensei! Everyone knows how much you like it when things are neat and tidy.” The young man smiled proudly, teeth stretching from ear to ear, and Tobirama tried his best not to think about how cute he looked with all that curly hair and those cheekbones that so closely resembled the man at his side. “I like your new shirt, too!”

“Flattery will get you nothing, Kagami,” Madara told the kid with a note of suspicious in his voice.

“Aw come on, we were just trying to do something nice for you!”

“Do your homework on time for once,” Madara snorted. “That would be nice.”

Kagami, as was apparently his name, wilted and turned away to sulk in the other direction. While his appearance was undoubtedly similar to Madara’s his personality seemed to be uncomfortably reminiscent of Hashirama instead. Tobirama really wasn’t sure what he thought of that. It was a relief to follow his partner towards the front of the room and slip behind the ancient desk covered in perfectly neat little stacks of paper and pens all sorted by color.

If there was one invention he would always be grateful to the non-magical community for it was pens. Sometimes Tobirama still came across an old ink pot in one of his closets and he always shoved it right back in to the mess with a shudder of memory. Normal folk were almost lucky not to live half as long as anyone with magic, saving them the trouble of remembering such dark times as the days when homework was done with quill and scrolls. Keeping track of it all had been a nightmare no matter how many extra pockets he sewed in to his clothing.

Settling himself in to the very center of the staging area at the front of the room, Madara swept his eyes over the class before him with an expression that Tobirama had come to realize meant he was looking for something specific.

“There’s a few faces missing,” he noted eventually.

“Uh, I think the Transformative Spells class last period had an accident,” Kagami piped up from his seat. “So anyone who was there is probably in the infirmary right now.”

“Ah.” Madara frowned, worry flashing through him so strongly that Tobirama felt it even from several feet away, although he let nothing of it show on his face. Without saying anything more on the subject he launched right in to a recap of what they should have been learning over the week while he’d been gone.

While he spoke he moved back and forth across the empty space at the front, stopping at the desk every couple of minutes to reach for a random object or tidy something that Tobirama had fiddled with, anything to use as an excuse for their arms to brush together and reestablish their connection. When he wasn’t getting smacked on the shoulder for messing with stuff Tobirama explored whatever items had been left out in easy reach. He passed over the homework assignments that someone else seemed to have graded – Madara just didn’t seem like a happy face sticker kind of guy – and instead pulled a binder towards himself that had no label at all. In his experience the things that went unlabeled usually had the most interesting things inside.

Generally they were also forbidden or taboo but that only made them more interesting.

First making certain that Madara was focused on his lecture, Tobirama flipped the binder open. His first reaction upon finding nothing inside but lesson plans was of irritated disappointment. Upon taking a closer look, however, he realized that he had accidentally stumbled on to something beautiful after all: Madara’s handwriting.

There hadn’t really been any need for his partner to write anything down over the past few days and suddenly Tobirama mourned that fact. He’d never seen more elegant script in his life. Each letter was a masterpiece, perfectly crafted with a patience he would never have himself. His own writing was usually cramped and rushed as he tried to get as many words on to the page as he could and as quickly as humanly possible. Not once in his life had he taken the time to make anything half as pretty as the lettering in front of him now. Madara’s writing was so nice just to look at that it took a couple of minutes for Tobirama to actually read what was written on the pages.

When he’d seen the title ‘Lesson Plan’ and a date from nearly a week ago he had assumed it would be nothing but a general outline of the material they were expected to cover. He was surprised to see the level of detail this plan included, complete with notes in the margins about which subjects his students were doing well on and could advance quicker as opposed to which they seemed to be struggling with and needed to have covered in more detail.

In all the years he’d spent here at the university – and despite still enjoying his earlier centuries it had already been a lot of years – he’d never known any of the teachers put this much effort in to planning their classes. Although to be fair he had no evidence that anyone other than Madara made their plans so detailed but that only worked as a point in the man’s favor. Tobirama had always assumed that lesson plans were no more than a rough outline, lazy and thoughtless, copy and pasted from all the years before. Knowing they were more than that gave him a little more respect for the position and it only got better as he kept reading down the page.

Underneath all of the technical details was a small section where Madara had penned in a few notes about specific students, who seemed to be having trouble with what and how to help them work through those issues, sometimes a personal reminder that this student or that one had reacted a certain way to his teachings and even suggestions to himself about how to tweak his lecture for the future. It was _thoughtful_.

Tobirama closed the binder and pushed it away from himself, uncomfortable suddenly and unable to pinpoint why. It was interesting having everything he thought he knew about someone slowly flipped upside down, there was no denying that, but it was also jarring and brought up a lot of introspective questions he wasn’t at all prepared to deal with.

No one liked to think they were so self-involved that they could judge someone else so wrongly.

Madara trundled over to brush against his arm a few moments later and Tobirama tensed, eyes darting up to make sure he’d replaced the binder of lesson plans _exactly_ where it had been before. With the obsessive organization system it would be all too obvious he had touched something if it were even an inch out of place. Luckily for him Madara wasn’t even looking at the desk. He stopped at Tobirama’s side to put a hand on his shoulder and look down at him with an expectant expression.

“I wasn’t listening,” he admitted quietly. Oddly, Madara didn’t even look annoyed. He turned back to the class without removing his hand.

“Take Tobirama here as an example. His natural element is water, the complete opposite of mine, but I have seen him both invoke fire and use fire runes. Can anyone tell me why that’s possible for him?”

“Because I’m just that good.” Tobirama smirked when a handful of students tittered.

“No,” a quiet voice piped up from the back. “It is because fire runes channel raw magic from the closest ley line and do not rely on a caster’s abilities while invocation begs power from the spirits themselves with no magic passing through the one invoking them at all.”

Madara squinted around the room until he found the one who had spoken and then nodded once in satisfaction. “Very good Shino, that’s exactly correct.”

“Good to know they have their basics down,” Tobirama muttered under his breath. “They’re only, what, fifth year students?” He grunted when the hand still resting on his shoulder clamped down extra hard in retaliation.

The lesson went on to a discussion of when it was best to use fire runes over any other options, always easier than invocations though they were also less powerful, and Tobirama let his attention wander off again. He considered going through the desk drawers when he ran out of things to inspect on the top of it but one look from Madara had his hands curling together in his lap. As much as he did enjoy riling the man up he wasn’t looking to become a visual aid by having his hair set on fire. Madara wore sparks much better than he did.

Boredom had set in again long before one of the students casually asked whether fire or water was stronger since the two elements were considered natural opposites. He was in the process of opening his mouth to gleefully suggest they make a demonstration of it when a bell began to chime to signify the end of the period, Madara’s eyes rolling back with visible relief.

His partner called out homework assignments over the sounds of everyone packing up their things and warned them that he probably still wasn’t back on a permanent basis so they should expect their substitute again. While he was busy shouting Kagami made a point of stopping by the front.

“It was nice to meet you,” he said, leaning over the desk to smile at Tobirama.

“Probably. I’m an absolute delight.”

The boy laughed at his joke, peeked over at Madara, then covered his mouth to laugh a bit more. “I’m sure you are.”

He was gone a moment later, joining the flood of bodies rushing off to their next class. Luckily for Tobirama’s attention span it was Thursday and Madara only happened to teach one period of class on Thursdays. For years his only social interactions had been the rare occasion he made it down to the dining hall at proper meal times or when Hashirama deigned to stop by his rooms. Even the librarian had stopped trying to pull him in for a chat when he went down to check out more books. He understood that his partner needed to get out more often than once a week but personally his own quota for human interaction had more than been met.

Madara didn’t count as company, not with their minds so closely intertwined that they couldn’t bear to be apart.

When the room was empty and the door snapped shut behind the last student Tobirama eyed the binder of lesson plans before standing up to watch his partner clear off the various things he’d written on the whiteboard. Yet another invention to be grateful to the non-magical community for. Chalkboards were so messy. It had actually taken Mito several years to convince her husband to install them in all the classrooms; not because of any budget concerns but simply because he stubbornly clung to the aesthetic of chalkboard classrooms in the castle which housed the university. Sometimes Tobirama wondered if Hashirama had only taken the job of Headmaster so he could pretend he was still living four centuries ago.

“Learn anything new?” Madara asked after the whiteboard was clean.

“Yes, actually, although I didn’t listen to a word you were saying.” Tobirama dragged his eyes away from the binder of treasures and pulled as innocent of an expression as he could manage. It had exactly the desired effect of making the other man roll his eyes.

“How–? No, never mind. I don’t think I want to know what you think you learned if it wasn’t anything from the class.”

Tobirama cocked his head to one side and noted that it seemed Madara was getting to know him as well as he was getting to know Madara. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing but it wasn’t really something he could stop so he simply allowed the thought to pass him by.

Standing up from the desk at last, he made his way over to stand next to his partner and weave their hands together with a sigh of relief that Madara immediately echoed. All the small excuses for brushing together had been the only thing that kept him sane throughout the past hour and they had another twenty minute walk ahead of them until to make it back home. It was good to know they _could_ separate now but it was still better when they didn’t have to.

“I used to hate you,” Tobirama grumbled, personally offended that he couldn’t say he still did.

“Yes and I still have no idea why.” Madara lifted one arm like he meant to cross them and then awkwardly aborted the motion after he realized he couldn’t with his other hand occupied. “I’m lovable! Your brother always says so!”

“Hashirama’s opinion doesn’t count, he loves everything that breathes in his general direction.”

Madara puffed his chest up to argue back and then deflated almost immediately. “Or things that don’t breathe. I caught him naming all the flagstones in the front courtyard once,” he admitted. Tobirama closed his eyes to block out the exasperated shame.

Together they puttered around cleaning up the classroom and putting away all the things Madara had used to demonstrate whatever he’d been talking about. As much as Tobirama normally couldn’t care less for having everything put away so long as he remembered where to go find it again later – laughable considering he never remembered where anything was – he found himself pointing out things that were still out of place and dragging Madara along behind him as he popped over to put something else away.

Once everything was back where it was supposed to be and all the books on Madara’s desk had been set at right angles again they were free to head on back home at last. Madara spent most of the walk making a case for why they would go back to class again the next day, whining that Fridays he only taught two classes and that it wouldn’t be too much different than just one class, especially since they were hours apart. Tobirama mostly let his wrinkled nose make his opinions on that known. It wasn’t the classes he objected to in particular, just the upset to his daily routine. Ever since this whole thing began his life had been steadily changing bit by bit, again and again, and all he wanted was to find a little equilibrium again.

Finally turning down the hallway where their rooms were located and finding Uchiha Izuna leaning against the wall with both hands in his pockets certainly was not a path towards finding his equilibrium. The mental connection between him and his partner lit up with startled happiness at almost the exact same moment Izuna looked down to see that they had once again linked hands as soon as they were out of the public eye.

“What the _fuck_ Aniki!?”

Tobirama closed his eyes and prayed for patience. Hopefully the gods would see fit to send enough for both of them.


	6. Chapter 6

After a solid eight minutes of nonsensical screaming Tobirama was dead sure that neither one of the Uchiha brothers even know what they were saying anymore, let alone knew what the other one was yelling about. Clearly neither of them was bothering to listen to the other. He knew damn well Madara could feel how irritated he was getting but apparently that mattered less than continuing to flap his jaw and show off how powerful his lungs could be. If Tobirama didn’t stop them it was anyone’s guess how long they would have continued on like that; really he was cutting in for their own good. Honest.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the headache already brewing behind his left eye.

“Both of you shut the fuck up!” he cut in at last, startling the two of them in to blessed silence. Madara, at least, had the decency to finally pay attention to how he was affecting his partner and assume a chastened look.

“Who put you in charge, freak?” Izuna did not.

“You did when you so clearly demonstrated the fact that you’re still an ignorant child at heart. Now, we can stand around all day screaming in each other’s faces or we can all go inside and sit down with a pot of tea like civilized adults.”

Tobirama waited but his derision seemed to have rendered Izuna speechless so he turned to open the door with a smirk on his face and Madara’s hand still firmly in his grasp. He’d gone through an entire class period with only brief contact to keep the pain at bay and he’d be damned if he gave it up again now just because somehow his partner’s annoying little brother had shown up unannounced after decades of being gone.

He kept a weather eye on the younger Uchiha as they all snaked through the maze of his front room, suspicious every time he saw the man’s limbs go anywhere near his carefully stacked books, but lucky for Izuna they all made it in to the living room without incident. Just to be a subtle dick he paused before sitting and gave Madara’s hand a squeeze as a silent offer for him to choose their seat. As expected, he chose the loveseat where they would both have enough room to be comfortable but they would be close enough to always have an excuse to be touching. Izuna’s jaw was tight and his lips pinched in barely suppressed rage as he widened his stance and refused to sit.

“Are either one of you going to tell me what the hell is going on here or am I supposed to guess? Because I’ve got to tell you, I don’t like where my guesses are going.” He sneered down at their entwined fingers.

“Bold of you to assume either one of us care what you like or don’t like,” Tobirama said. He wouldn’t have felt bad for his sass either way but feeling Madara’s amusement was like getting double icing on a cake he was already eating.

“What are you doing here, brat?” his partner chimed in at last. “Last I heard you were somewhere in the western countries.”

Izuna huffed and crossed his arms tightly. “I was. And I was chasing something _big_ until that friend of yours sent me a letter and called me back here, said my skills were needed to figure out what happened to you. And he didn’t give me any more details than that! I was fucking worried! But I get all the way here and find you holding hands with Snow White over here? You’ve got to be kidding me, Aniki!”

“He called you back here to help with this?” The smirk on Madara’s face drained away to be replaced with furrowed eyebrows and, without seeming to give much thought to his actions, leaning further against Tobirama in search of comfort. “I know he said he hadn’t found anything yet but I didn’t realize he had _no_ clues.”

“Alright, come on. You’ve got to give me something here. Are you guys playing a prank on me or something? Did you get married when I wasn’t looking?” Izuna gestured wildly between them, clearly upset by their proximity.

Since they obviously weren’t going to get any information out of him until he had the answers he wanted Madara sighed and straightened up a little. Then he paused to give Tobirama an apologetic look despite the fact that Tobirama had not verbally expressed his disappointment.

“It’s…hard to explain,” he began.

“Try,” Izuna interrupted drily. Madara flipped him the middle finger.

“Let me talk, then!”

“So talk!”

Already done with this non-conversation, Tobirama checked out entirely and retreated inside his own head. He was well aware that doing so would be to allow Madara the opportunity to wildly miscommunicate what had actually happened to them but since it was Izuna he really could not have cared less. Izuna’s opinion mattered to him about as much as a bit of dirt clinging to the bottom of his shoe. Why should be bore himself listening to an explanation of something he had already lived through just for Izuna’s benefit?

For however long the two brothers were busy interrupting each other he stared off in to space and mentally went back over the last chapter he and his partner had been reading in one of their library books. The link between them flashed wildly between irritation, fascination, indignation, and a whole host of other ‘ations’ until finally Tobirama was brought out of his thought by a gentle nudge against one shoulder. He looked up to find Madara with his lips pursed together in a serious expression.

“Did I miss anything fun?” Tobirama asked.

“Izuna was just telling me about Hashirama’s letter,” Madara said. Nodding, Tobirama set all thoughts of his book aside and gestured for Izuna to go on.

He got a prissy look in return but that was fairly par for the course when it came to the two of them.

“As I was saying, Hashirama sent me a letter that said you were in trouble and he needed help figuring out what happened. So, since everyone knows I’m the best at that shit, he asked me to come back to the university and sniff around a bit.” Izuna took a deep breath and looked around before finally throwing himself down in the closest available seat, the squashy armchair. Madara sent their favorite perch a longing stare.

“When he said he had someone looking in to things I thought he meant there was _already_ someone looking in to it, not that he had sent for you. Not that I’m not happy to see you,” Madara hurried to add when his brother gave him a look. “You know I appreciate your visits.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I do! You don’t visit enough.”

“Funny,” Tobirama murmured. “And here I thought he visited too much.”

He managed not to laugh out loud but it was a close call when he could feel Madara’s amusement bleeding through as well. Brothers loved as hard as they hated, that was true almost the world over. It was good to know he wasn’t the only one who caught a laugh from watching their sibling suffer a little bit.

At least this particular sibling would be useful now that he was here, as much as Tobirama hated to admit that. Izuna bragged about being the best at what he did and unfortunately he was right. From a very young age he had known what he wanted to do for a living and, after carefully arranging his class schedule to train him in the right ways, he had left the university with only a few short years of education under his belt. Barely a century later and his name was known across several different countries as one of the best when it came to investigative magics.

Rolling his eye in exasperation, Izuna took his turn flashing a middle finger and sank down further in the arm chair, pausing before he spoke again to shift around as though only just noticing how comfortable it was.

“Whether you like it or not I’m here now. So I might as well do the damn job I’m getting paid for.”

“You’re not doing this one pro bono for your dearest brother?” Tobirama asked mockingly.

“No. Mads didn’t hire me, Hashirama did, and he can pay for my services just like everyone else does. So, you got anything to add to the account that might help me figure out what the hell happened?” The way Izuna’s gaze sharpened it was clear that he had slipped in to work mode and Tobirama grudgingly admitted he could respect that. He knew the feeling of giving himself over to his craft.

With a shake of his head he admitted, “I wasn’t listening but Madara probably covered all the important points. You told him about the snow, right?”

“The snow?” Izuna’s eyes narrowed and Madara frowned.

“Don’t look at me like that, there was snow everywhere! None of it looked special!”

Tobirama sighed. “No, you idiot. The snow around the spot where the transportation seal was laid. Remember? That I told you there were no whispers from the snow?”

“Oh. I forgot that part.”

“Aniki, you always forgot the most important details. That is _exactly_ the sort of thing I need to know! If Tobirama’s element was telling him no one had been through there recently then that means the trap was laid in advance – well in advance if the snow had time to forget.”

“Unless there were no whispers because it was fresh,” Tobirama mumbled. He frowned when the other two stared at him with wide eyes. “It wasn’t snowing when we stepped outside but I very rarely pay attention to the weather. For all I know it could have just fallen, which would explain how the glyph came to be underneath everything without the snow remembering.”

“Shit, I never thought of that,” Madara admitted.

It was slightly jarring to see him and Izuna made the exact same face while they sank deep in to thought. Tobirama wrinkled his nose in irritation as he look back and forth between the two men, spotting all the differences between them just to make himself feel better. Any connection to Izuna was a terrible thing in his books. His distaste must have been stronger than he thought because Madara lifted his head a moment later to give Tobirama a flat look that told him to stop being stupid.

Their silent conversation drew Izuna’s attention as well and it was a relief to see that his irritation looked nothing like Madara’s as he watched them interact, face pinched like he’d been force fed a lemon.

“Any other little gems you might have left out? No signed confessions taped to the wall that you forgot to tell me about?”

“No one tapes anything to a stone wall, brat!”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s the point you were meant to fight him on,” Tobirama muttered.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I am indeed right here at your side, as I have been for the past several days.” His smirk did nothing to calm Madara down but he refused to feel bad about that. Despite the annoyance on his face that anyone else would take to mean he was about to blow his top, Madara’s emotions were much more complex than that. Irritation mixed with amusement, appreciation for a terrible joke he didn’t want to admit he found funny just because it was at his own expense.

Finding out that Madara, of all people, had a decent sense of humor was enough on its own to make this whole situation worth it. Without the connection between them he probably would never have found out half the things he knew now.

And how strange it seemed to him now imagining a world in which he didn’t know the feeling of that second presence in his mind waking slowly like dawn rising over the horizon, the sleepy contentment that greeted him almost every morning and those few moments before they remembered they were two instead of one when they existed in perfect harmony. So perfectly melded were they now that half of Tobirama’s identity was in the way he revolved around the man at his side.

“Where’s all the red?” Izuna asked suddenly. Madara turned to him with confusion.

“Huh?”

“All the red clothing. For like four centuries you’ve been dressing entirely in red almost every day but you’re all in black now. What gives?”

His question gave Tobirama pause because that was one thing he hadn’t really noticed for himself. Looking down, he realized that his own normally muted wardrobe had changed as well. Instead of the plain grays or blacks that he generally preferred, his shirt that day was a bright blue that probably only existed in his closet because of Hashirama.  He took comfort that it was, at least, not the same fire engine red he had always mocked his partner for.

“Maybe I just felt like a change,” Madara said, clearly floundering and going with the first thing that came to mind. He huffed when Izuna lifted one eyebrow in disbelief.

“Uh-huh, I’m sure that’s all it is. Look, I get that your magic is connected or whatever now but that doesn’t mean you guys have to hold hands or cuddle or whatever all the time, does it? You’re acting really differently and I don’t like it. Something else is definitely going on between you two and I am going to find out whether you like it or not.”

“Yeah, yeah, nothing gets by you. World’s greatest detective and all that.” Deliberately leaning in to Tobirama’s side just to be contrary, Madara lifted his free hand in a shooing motion. “Go on then, go detect things Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

The two of them stared each other down until Izuna gave in with a muted snarl, leaping up from the armchair and all but throwing himself across the room, grumbling all the while about visiting the sight of their original disappearance. Since any of the teachers could speak to the castle wards and ask where the disturbance had been that night, neither of the two left behind felt any need to offer their assistance. Izuna could find what he needed on his own. That was his job after all.

Before either of them did anything Tobirama held up one finger for silence and cocked an ear, listening hard until there came the sound of Izuna slamming the door of his front door, and only then did he completely relax, secure in the knowledge that his precious books were safe from harm. Then the two of them collapsed against each other in helpless laughter. Seeing Izuna here was unexpected and their reactions to his presence were an interesting clash but watching him get so upset just because their situation had brought them much closer together was the finest entertainment. What the mysterious ‘something’ he seemed to think was there between them would remain unknown until he could storm back in and get himself all worked up again.

After they had both calmed down Madara got up and popped in to the other room to grab some paper. When asked for a pen Tobirama blinked at him.

“How did you even know where the paper was?” he asked. Madara frowned down at the clean sheets in his hands as though he were suddenly asking himself that very question.

“I don’t know. I went in there and just…grabbed them? Going for that cupboard just felt right. Whatever, do you know where I can find a pen or not?” He hovered in the doorway, clearly ready to pop back in to the other room, but Tobirama only shook his head.

“Try one of the desks in there. I usually throw my pens back in the drawers but…”

Madara sighed. “But never the same drawer. How you can be so meticulous and so yet so disorganized at the same time I will never understand!”

“Well I don’t know how you remember where everything is all the time!” Tobirama called after him as his partner disappeared, leaving the door open between them. “I mean, who has the headspace to bother remembering where every pen and jar goes? Sure I know that I _have_ something, I know that I _have_ three packets of beetle eyes, but hell if I remember exactly where I put them.”

“You put them in this drawer right here,” Madara’s voice drifted back faintly. He sounded a little sick and Tobirama was hit unexpectedly with the memory of a night several decades ago when he broke in to Madara’s room just to paint the man’s pillowcase with beetle eyes and honey. The screams were probably still echoing somewhere in the castle.

Despite his efforts to pull off an apologetic look, by the time Madara walked back in to the room he was still holding up one hand to hide a smile as he tried not to giggle over a prank he’d pulled off many years ago. At least his partner appeared to have found the pen he was looking for as well as a backup in case the first one was out of ink. He’d noticed that Madara was like that, always thinking ahead with a secondary plan so he could be ready when things failed to go his way – as they so often did. Tobirama had never been like that. All his life he’d been the type to throw himself headlong in to something and if it didn’t pan out then he simply came up with something else on the fly. Plans were distracting; plans had a way of limiting the imagination.

Once he stopped to think about it, their naturally opposite habits were actually fairly complimentary. With one of them used to thinking maybe too far ahead and the other used to throwing himself in to see what might happen they would actually make a great team in that sense. Although after learning so much about each other Tobirama thought that wasn’t really so surprising anymore; he thought they made a great team in quite a lot of aspects.

Which on its own was odd to come to terms with. On the one hand nothing could make him take that back, he stood by the idea that Madara was a good compliment to him. But on the other he was rather irritated to have his views and opinions so forcibly changed just on principle. If he was going to be proved wrong about something like this then he would have at least liked the chance to come to such conclusions on his own over time, preferably without ever giving Madara the chance to gloat about it. Being wrong was always terrible but it was so much worse when the other party started in with the smugness.

Reason number one he and Izuna had never gotten along. They were both smug assholes.

“You know”-Madara settled down next to him once again, startling Tobirama out of his thoughts-“even if Izuna is here for work he’s going to want to visit a few times before he heads out again.”

“Ugh.” He closed his eyes with disgust and turned his head away. Instead of sympathizing as he should have Madara shuffled the papers he’d grabbed in to a neat little stack and slipped a thin book underneath them for a solid writing surface.

“He’s not as bad as you think. Just…wait, no, he is as bad as you think. Can you at least just cool it on the attitude for a bit then? For me?”

Tobirama frowned, still refusing to look at him. He opened his eyes but remained completely still when he felt one of his arms being lifted for Madara to duck underneath it. After waiting for his partner to settle he peeked sideways to see the picture he made with both feet resting on the coffee table and his tongue poking out from between his teeth as he meticulously drew an empty table on the page with space for titles above each column.

“What will you do for me in return?” he grumbled. Without looking up Madara hummed.

“I’ll read one of your books to you until you fall asleep?”

Admittedly, that was a good offer. Madara had a very nice reading voice. His capitulation was obvious enough in that he didn’t offer any more fight so Tobirama said nothing further on the subject as he shifted around until their sides were flush together and he could stretch his one arm across the back of the couch.

“Do you know what he meant by there being something else going on between us?” he asked instead.

“No.” Madara raised his head at last and they shared a look of curious bemusement. “I have no idea what he thinks he’s on about. Maybe ferreting out secrets all the time just has him seeing things where there’s nothing to see.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Tobirama laid his head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. He felt oddly restless. Whether they did end up in Madara’s classroom again or not tomorrow, perhaps he should insist on spending some time in the room where he did his brewing as well. It had been a while since he checked in on some of the elixirs that needed to ferment for long periods of time and there were all those new recipes he’d been putting off since the night Hashirama asked him to cover patrol duty.

Maybe he could brew something exceptionally smelly before Izuna arrived and stink the asshole back out of their home. There was nothing wrong with getting two things done at once.

Plans for tomorrow settled in his own mind – proud of himself for taking the time to make any plans at all – Tobirama closed his eyes and contemplated a little nap. There was nothing better to send him to sleep than the contented feeling of Madara’s mind and the happy little bubbles that pushed against the barrier between them as he wrote out his after class notes.

The last thing Tobirama could remember thinking about before his nap sprang up on him out of nowhere was that he should have made them go over to the bed so he could fall asleep on Madara’s shoulder.


	7. Chapter 7

To Tobirama’s relief they did not attend Madara’s morning class the next day. Unfortunately, almost as though the universe was trying not to be too nice to him all at once, Izuna joined them for a late breakfast after encountering Hashirama on his way up to deliver them their food. He found himself victim to a quaint family meal with Madara draped over one shoulder still half asleep and Hashirama beaming at him from the other side while Izuna glared at all three of them in turns. It certainly wasn’t the lazy start he’d been hoping for.

He also didn’t appreciate the way Izuna kept looking back and forth between him and Madara with distaste clear in his expression as though both of them were wearing shirts bearing some kind of offensive logos or something. Whatever he found so disgusting was never brought up, however, so Tobirama did his best to keep his promise to Madara and just ignore him. Last night he had fallen asleep to the delightful rumble of Madara’s voice reading from one of his new texts on sealing water in motion for later use and the mixture of interesting subject matter and soothing reading voice had sent him in to some delightful dreams that he absolutely would not be sharing with his present company.

None of them needed to know he had a sudden taste for such embarrassing things like lazy afternoons outside on the university grounds with his head in Madara’s lap and fingers carding gently through his hair. That was most certainly no one’s business but his own.

“So,” Hashirama obliviously cut through the tension he seemed entirely unaware of. “Izuna, you spent yesterday evening inspecting the grounds and the site where these two were found. Did you find anything that might be helpful?”

“Nothing,” Izuna grunted. From that one word it was obvious how offensive he found that failure.

“Really? Absolutely nothing at all?” On the other hand, Madara was more than happy to slip in to sibling mode and mock his brother when something didn’t go as easily as expected.

He got a bitchy sneer for his troubles. “Nothing immediately useful.”

“Oh, but that means there was something!” Hashirama clapped his hands together happily. “Anything helps, right?”

Izuna sighed and rubbed at the side of his face, finally giving up on looking bitchy in favor of showing his frustration that this investigation wasn’t going to be as quick and easy as he thought. After centuries of being the best in his field he had probably built up certain expectations for himself. Tobirama was no stranger with failing to meet personal expectations – although he would rather die than sympathize with Izuna, of all people.

“I did find something but without further context it won’t help us. One of the other teachers came with me to speak with the wards right around the area of first contact and we discovered that the original disturbance was actually several meters above the ground, some kind of impact. But the interesting thing is that it wasn’t a living person that touched the barrier.”

“So it was, what, just someone tossing rocks?” Madara sat forward to drop his empty plate on the coffee table.

“No, it was something bigger than a rock,” Izuna said. He looked frustrated that he didn’t have more information.

Unfortunately when the wards were drawn the original castors focused more on size and sentience than intelligence. All the wards had been able to tell them was that the disturbance had been non-organic and widespread. Beyond that the only thing they could do was happily greet the teachers. Or angrily dismiss students, they were quite fond of that too.

Drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, Hashirama frowned.

“We have a seer here at the university; if she will consent to speak with you would that possibly help? Hinata is quite young but she is quite powerful. Without her we might not have found these two for several days.”

“That- yes, actually. That probably would be helpful even if her Sight doesn’t give us any direct answers. I’ll trek down to where you found them first and nose around; if you could mark the spot on a map for me after breakfast I’ll head out straight away. When I get back if you could point me to this ‘Hinata’, that would be great.” Izuna looked down at the remains of his own breakfast, then over at his brother. “Actually, maybe I’ll just head out now. I don’t know if I can stomach anything else after having to sit next to these two for so long.”

He was up out of his chair almost before Madara could huff indignantly. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I don’t want to be around when you two idiots start sucking face or whatever.”

“ _What?!_ ” Madara’s jaw dropped open, Tobirama choking on air beside him.

“You heard me,” Izuna grumbled as he shifted his weight. “The way you two are practically in each other’s laps all the time, did you think I wouldn’t notice? Clearly your cores aren’t the only things that merged together. Ugh, wait, no I take that back. Even I don’t want to know what I meant by that.” Izuna’s whole face scrunched together and he turned from side to side, seemingly too overwhelmed with disgust at whatever images were in his head to figure out where he wanted to go.

While Hashirama waved him out of the room as though nothing were wrong both Madara and Tobirama were still spluttering with disbelief, neither of them able to believe he would even dare to think such a thing, let alone actually give credit to the idea.

“I suppose I should get going too,” Hashirama sighed. “Hikaku’s summoning class is having a demonstration out on the southern grounds and I promised to attend. Madara, should I send word for your substitute that they’ll need to cover your afternoon as well? Madara? Are the two of you alright?”

“You don’t think we’re… _together_ , right!?” Madara turned wild eyes on his best friend and Tobirama stared off in the opposite direction, trying to distinguish whether he was as riled up by this as his partner was or if it was just their emotions feeding back and forth across the wall between them and hyping him up much farther than he would be if he just leaned away and broke off physical contact. He wasn’t going to do that but it would be nice to know he could.

Hashirama, on the other hand, looked only mildly startled to be asked and not at all surprised by the actual subject of the question. “To be honest I didn’t want to ask because I was afraid of the answer but, well, yeah. I kind of thought…maybe?”

“But-! Ugh, just get out. Go away.” Madara sank back in to the couch with a huff while Hashirama pouted.

“Whaaaat? I didn’t say anything bad! You’re the one that asked!”

“And now I’m asking you to leave!”

“Tobi, you’re not going to just let him kick me out like this are you?” Hashirama turned his pout over to appeal to his little brother.

He was met with nothing more than a pointed expression. “Weren’t you leaving anyway?”

Drooping as though they had both told him to never come back, Hashirama sniffled and mumbled under his breath about betrayal and meanies who never wanted him around. He still gathered all their plates and dishes on his way out though, sealing them in to a small pocket of space for easy carrying until he had time to drop them off for the kitchen staff to clean.

Now alone in the room, Madara and Tobirama continued to deliberately stare in any direction but at each other. It was hard to describe the energy between them. Awkwardness wasn’t quite true because they could both feel each other’s emotions so there was no need to worry about hiding. Worry wasn’t right either since there really wasn’t any sort of negative outcome to be afraid of. No word seemed to really sum up the vibe left behind in the wake of such an odd revelation but ‘anxious’ at least came close. Despite being grown men well out of their adolescence there was still something about the idea that their most important people had come to some sort of misconception about such an important facet of their life which rankled.

Also maybe finding out that everyone seriously thought they were getting up to something other than trying to learn how to live with each other was mildly upsetting. Neither of them liked to be called a liar and they had been very open about their feelings concerning this situation from the start.

“We’re not a couple,” Madara declared, shattering the quiet.

“I’m aware,” Tobirama replied dryly. His partner huffed.

“They’re both just idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about. Obviously they meant it as a joke.”

Clearing his throat, Tobirama nodded and shifted in his seat. Doing so only reminded him how closely they were wedged together and, thinking about it, he supposed he could understand how Izuna might have gotten that sort of impression on body language cues alone. They were admittedly quite physically comfortable with each other now that they sometimes forgot they were more than one person. But Hashirama at least should know better and even Izuna should remember that he and Madara had never meant anything to each other. Melding their core magics might have brought them closer enough to be the same person but it didn’t create emotions that had never been there before.

It did help them get along better, that much was true, although Tobirama would like to see anyone not grow at least a little fond of Madara when they knew the man as well as he did now. Still, that didn’t immediately translate in to a romantic relationship!

“You’re not going to let me go to class, are you?”

“Hm?” Tobirama looked over at his partner at last, mulling over the sudden change in subject. He really wasn’t in the mood to go out where there were other people but just thinking about being separated for the almost two hours they would be apart made his very bones ache. On the other hand he knew that going would make Madara happy. “Fine. We’ll go to your stupid class.”

Madara squinted at him thoughtfully for a moment before shaking his head. “No. We’ll just stay here.”

“What? But you want to go!”

“And going would make you unhappy. The day will go much better for both of us if we just stay here.” He patted Tobirama’s knee as though that was the end of the discussion.

Which it pretty much was, to be fair, mostly because Tobirama was stunned for the hundredth time by how well they could read each other even though he should very much be over it by now. It was just so strange having someone be so considerate of his feelings. Even more strange that it was Madara.

“I always thought you felt nothing,” he said before he could think the words through. Wincing when he felt Madara’s shock lancing through their minds, he hurried to explain. “Not that you had no emotions whatsoever, just that you only cared about very few things and even then not _much_. I always knew you loved your brother and of course I knew you and Hashirama had been friends since we were children but I thought that really nothing else mattered to you. I thought you were uptight. Actually I always thought it was funny that someone so cold would be given the blessings of fire.”

“Huh. I didn’t realize…you thought that poorly of me.” Madara drummed his finger over Tobirama’s knee, probably not even realizing he’d left his hand there.

“Obviously I know better than that now.” Nothing Tobirama had ever said in his life had ever sounded so weak.

Rather than mock him as he might have in the past, Madara shrugged and hauled himself up off the couch with a gruff clearing of his throat. “Right, yeah. I know. Are we done with all this deep shit, yet? Let’s just go read or whatever it was you wanted to do today.”

“How about a compromise? So that we can both be happy. You help me check up on some of my elixirs until lunch and then afterwards I’ll go to the afternoon class with you.”

“Are you sure?” Madara asked.

If it were anyone else he would have leveled them with a bitchy look for asking one of his least favorite questions; obviously he was sure if he was the one to offer. Since this was Madara who could practically feel him roll his eyes even before he’d done so he settled for simply getting off the couch and heading across the room without saying anything.

The lab he used for his experiments was actually fully separate from his living apartments, a safety precaution he had bolstered with several layers of wards and protective enchantments on all four walls. It was still only just across the hall though. Madara’s nose was twitching with curiosity as he followed Tobirama in and began to wander around, dark eyes trying to look everywhere at once, both hands politely crossed behind his back. Living in Tobirama’s head for so long must have instilled some unconscious lab safety in to him since Tobirama had actually expected him to walk in and start touching things willy-nilly.

Without physical contact between them it would have been the perfect time for Tobirama to stop and examine how he actually felt about what Izuna had said, his own thoughts and impressions without another mind bleeding over in to his own. Instead he turned all of his focus on to the three miniature cauldrons spaced evenly along the table in the center of the room. Two of them simmered and hiccupped cheerfully while the one closest to him sat still and dark with all the signs of a brew gone wrong.

For the most part neither of them spoke as Tobirama went about trying to save one of his experiments from total failure. Madara watched from a safe distance and asked the occasional question, helping when he was asked to track down one ingredient or another, but the hours of their morning largely passed them by in silence.

As was fairly typical for him, Tobirama found the rest of the world slipping away in fits and starts, chunks of time disappearing only for him to tune back in to reality and realize that he had completed one task and moved on to three others. What wasn’t typical and yet only struck him as such when he stopped to think about it was the way he and Madara moved around the room perfectly in sync with one another. One stepped and the other stepped with them, one reached and the other handed over the tool they were reaching for. When one turned the other bent out of the way without being asked or even looking. It was the most elegant dance he’d ever been a part of and neither of them even noticed themselves doing it until Tobirama looked down at the pestle he was using and wondered where it had come from.

Hadn’t he broken his? Staring down at the one in his hand he seemed to recall holding a broken one at some point before, though the memory was hard to bring up for some reason. Each time he tried his mind shied away and urged him towards another train of thought.

Gentle fingers touched his wrist and Tobirama blinked as his entire being sagged with the familiar relief of regaining contact with his other half.

“Everything okay? You feel…strange. Farther away than when you just zone out in to your own head.”

“I don’t think I’ve been doing that nearly as much lately,” Tobirama deflected.

“True. You’ve been much more grounded whenever we’re touching each other.” And they were almost always touching each other if they had the choice. “But don’t think I didn’t notice you dodging that question. Are you alright?”

Breathing in and back out, Tobirama nodded. “Yes, just feeling off in a way I can’t pinpoint. I’ll be fine. Can you light the fire underneath that mixture again? I think I might have thought of something that could revitalize it; if we can come up with a way to save these elixirs after improper brewing it would cut down the waste in the infirmary by at least a quarter.”

“Right. All the times Tsunade has to step away from her brewing for a patient, that has to be pretty frustrating for her.” Madara cringed in solidarity even as he reached out to snap his fingers at the burner underneath the miniature cauldron.

When instead of fire he shot a stream of water from his hand they both froze, staring at the burner where it was now dripping wet. That absolutely was not supposed to happen. Madara was and always had been a fire mage, extraordinarily talented in his own element but also completely unable to so much as sniff in the direction of any other. In no way should he have been able to produce anything other than the tongue of flame he’d clearly been trying to call out.

Madara turned to look at him with the same stunned expression he was surely wearing himself. Then they both looked down at his hand where it still hovered in the air.

“Did that happen?” he breathed.

“Try it again,” Tobirama urged him, scientific curiosity rearing its head.

Both of them kept their eyes peeled and watched closely as Madara shook out his hand and then raised it again, poised with his thumb pressed tightly against his middle finger. This time when he snapped Tobirama was paying enough attention to recognize that telltale pulling from deep inside of himself and the sensation was so unexpected he dropped his pestle back in to its mortar. It was hard to say whether he was more shocked by that or by the small ball of water that appeared in the air at the behest of Madara’s call to hover just above his palm.

“ _Tobirama_ ,” Madara whined anxiously, mounting panic rolling off him so strongly they didn’t even need to be touching for it to permeate the entire room.

“How…are you using _my_ magic?” Tobirama asked with wonder. He looked down at his own hands, “I wonder…”

“No d– whoa!”

Both of them shuddered when Tobirama clapped his hands together and drew them apart slowly, something that would usually summon up the same ball of water Madara had achieved with a snap of his fingers, to find that this time he had managed to light a small flame in the air where his own element should have been. Tobirama had dabbled in the other elements before in what small ways he could, runes and dormant seals left behind by others. But, as Madara had said to his class the day before, he had no talent for creating fire himself.

Manipulating fire felt different from water. Almost against his will he began to hone in on the way it crackled within his veins instead flowing like a cool balm. The pull when he fed a little more power in to it to make the flame jump higher felt as though it were pulling at something from outside his body and that pretty much confirmed his theory.

“We’re drawing magic from each other,” he murmured, eyes riveted on the flame between his palms. “When our cores merged it must have been even more thorough than we thought. This is incredible!”

“It’s weird,” Madara shot back.

“Groundbreaking! I’ve never even heard of anything like this before! I wonder, can both of us summon water _and_ fire now? Can we summon both at the same time? Can one only use water when the other uses fire? Just imagine the possibilities!”

“Okay, that does sound worth playing around with.”

Tobirama looked up to see his partner looking back at him with a slowly dawning grin and the light of discovering sparking in his eyes. He’d never seen anything more intriguing. Echoing that grin back, he shifted his gaze to the sphere of water he knew so well, knew the shape of its curve and the feeling of manipulating it to different purposes. Curiosity had ever been his greatest weakness; now was no different.

“I wonder…”

With no more warning than that he stepped forward with arms outstretched to press his flame against Madara’s water just to see what might happen. He hadn’t really taken the time to come up with any theories, although he supposed his instincts naturally assumed that one would cancel the other out, most likely water extinguishing fire as he had utilized so many times in the past to aggravate the man before him.

Their jaws dropped together and hearts stuttered when Madara’s hands cupped Tobirama’s and the contact brought them together in such a way that blended their magics together like nothing either of them had ever seen.

“Liquid fire,” Tobirama gasped. “It’s not magma; it’s- it’s _liquid fire_! Are you seeing this!?”

“Yeah. I’m seeing this.”

“Can you believe it?”

“No.” Madara was having just as much trouble as him peeling his eyes away from the phenomenon happening between them. “It’s beautiful…”

And it was. Colored like fire, crackling and hot, yet liquid and flowing like water with the same cool feeling in their veins. Visually it was incredible but the feeling of it, there simply weren’t words. The intimacy of using both of their magic together at the same time was something Tobirama was suddenly incredibly grateful to have the chance to experience. It was something he never would have imagined was possible and if he’d known he would not have expected he would have the chance to experience it for himself.

Like in most situations when he wasn’t aware of the boundaries yet, Tobirama’s way of testing them was of course to try something bigger and better. Madara’s caution rippled in their shared mind but he could feel how the man was just as eager as he was to push farther and so the brief moment of warning went ignored.

They really should have listened to themselves.

With a surge of magic their liquid fire climbed high enough to brush the ceiling and the protective seals covering every wall of the room reacted immediately upon detecting a foreign substance where it shouldn’t be able to reach. Tobirama had time to feel a shadow of dread before the wards activated and, in a twist of irony, it was for once his own precautions that struck him down.

It happened almost too fast for them to realize what was happening. One second they were completely involved with the moment of perfect harmony between their shared beings and in the next several of the seals covering the ceiling struck out at the source of what they identified as a threat. Both of them cried out as a barrier slammed down between them, severing their connection and throwing them both backwards in opposite directions to crash against benches and cabinets, ingredients and equipment scattering under their dual impacts.

Tobirama wheezed in protest, unsure if he was hurt more by the physical damage to his body or the mental damage to suddenly being left with no sense of Madara at all. Pain like he had only ever felt when their bond was new and untested ripped through him to leave him curled and helpless on the floor, one arm stretching blindly across the room to where he could see Madara, see him but not feel him, as though half of his very soul had been shredded and removed from existence.

Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision and Tobirama fell in to it with his waning vision fixated on the perfectly still form across the room, thundering heart heavy like lead in his chest.


	8. Chapter 8

Cool evening air around them, a heaviness on their skin like the pressure before rain, symmetry in their mind and an ache in their flesh as though they had gone three rounds with a heavyweight champion. Waking was not peaceful but it was better than the darkness that lingered and reached for them still.  Voices murmured around them but whatever they were saying wasn’t half as interesting as burrowing in to themselves, arms holding tight and throats humming in quiet protest to the way foreign hands were suddenly petting at their hair.

“Tobi? Madara? Can you hear me?”

“Don’t call us that,” they murmured, unsure why but knowing that was the usual response.

“Oh no, they’re doing it again.” That voice was familiar in more than one way, attached to more than one set of memories, and that was the first hint that something was off.

Another voice that set off the same dual reactions chimed in from somewhere off to the side. “Doing what? Were they talking together like that a lot before?”

“In the beginning, yes.”

“That’s dumb. And weird. Why?”

Without opening their eyes they smiled, two foreheads pressed together, whole and safe and happy. “We are one,” they whispered.

“Oh hell no! Fuck that! I thought I told you two not to be gross whenever I was around!” A hand grabbed at one of their shoulders but the pull lasted only a moment before it was torn away again without shifting them more than an inch to one side.

“No! Izuna, no! You don’t – you can’t know the pain it would cause them! If you love your brother then _please_ do not separate them! It has to be by their own choice or it could do even more damage!”

Brother. The voices continued to babble back and forth but they had already reverted in to their own mind to contemplate that word. Brother. It brought forth so many different feelings, identical and yet so very different, and they associated it with both of the voices speaking close to them…and yet they didn’t. How strange. Brother and yet not brother, sibling and friend and long-standing rival.

The fog of first waking began slowly dissipating for clearer thoughts to seep in. Memories of the days before came to them and the reminder that they were, in fact, two people was as painful as it was necessary. With their eyes still closed they pressed closer together and sighed. Parting as a mere concept was abhorrent but as they gradually remembered who they were they could see more and more why it was necessary to break the perfect harmony of being together. They didn’t have to like it though.

Nor did they have to do so quickly. Izuna could be heard whining about not wanting to lose his brother to the mind of some ‘frosted flaky asshole’ as the two of them very thoroughly said goodbye to each other. It wasn’t like they would be very far away from each other – obviously they didn’t have to move apart if they didn’t want to – but it was different being together like this as one person than being together as two people sitting next to each other yearning to be whole again. Still, there were things beyond their shared consciousness that they wouldn’t be able to experience the right way in this state. Things like properly greeting the brothers they both loved so deeply despite also frequently desiring to murder them.

As they both grimaced at the discomfort of extraction Tobirama nevertheless grasped at the frayed ends of his own self and pulled them all together, inevitably pulling a part of Madara deeper within himself but not caring in the slightest. They had already picked up enough habits from each other because of this bond; a few more wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Will the two of you please just shut up?” he growled. Hashirama spun around to clutch at the covers he just now realized were spread over their legs.

“Tobi? Is that you? Just you I mean?”

“Stop calling me that!”

“It _is_ you!” He threw himself down on the bed with no further questions, trying to draw both of them in to a hug at the same time and fending off their screeching protests with happy smiles.

Standing to one side with an irritable scowl, Izuna eyed his own brother with obvious trepidation until Hashirama was thrown off the bed at last and Madara had a moment to look over and return his crazy expression. With the hand not still clutching tightly to Tobirama he reached out to swat Izuna on whatever body part was in range.

“You can stop making that face,” he snapped. “I would suggest learning to be a bit nicer to Tobirama since this little situation here isn’t going to change any time soon – or ever, if we get our way about it. We’re a package deal now so what you say to him you are saying to me.”

“Whatever, Aniki. Apparently I wasted all that time I spent worrying. If you’re gonna be all preachy about things then maybe I just pack up this investigation of mine and leave!”

“Hashirama won’t pay you if you leave,” Madara deadpanned.

Izuna paused and furrowed his brows, realizing his brother was right. He peeked over at Hashirama, still clinging to his own sibling, but all Hashirama did was shrug apologetically and nod. After only a couple days here and no real leads yet paying him at this point would just be stupid. Seeing that his threat was an empty one Izuna rolled his eyes and slumped down on to a nearby chair. It wasn’t until he did so and brought attention to their surroundings that Tobirama sat up slowly with the realization that they had woken up in the infirmary.

“Who found us?” he asked because clearly someone had.  

“Me.” Hashirama raised a hand. “You never gave me a straight answer about Madara’s class so I was coming up a little early in case I had to run down to speak with the substitute before lunch and give him time to prepare. I found you on opposite sides of the lab and you were both unresponsive. It was scary.”

Both of the bonded pair shuddered at the memory, Tobirama falling back to the mattress so they could curl a little closer together. In several hundred years of wielding dangerous magics they had both encountered their fair share of painful moments but nothing would ever compare to that moment when their connection was lost, all sense of their other half blocked by the automatic protective barrier the laboratory seals had dropped in to place.

They weren’t given much time to put those dreadful moments behind them though; Hashirama was well-known by many for his inability to read a room, a habit he freely demonstrated now.

“Was it scary for you guys too?” he asked. Tobirama scoffed and looked over his shoulder.

“I’d love it if you would talk about literally anything else in the world, how’s that for an answer?”

“Seconded.” Madara gave his brother a narrowed eye look, to which Izuna crossed his eyes and exaggerated the same expression back at him.

Hashirama offered them both a sympathetic look that they chose to ignore. Undeterred, he fussed about straightening the blankets around them until they had to shove him away again. Even then he still continued to fiddle with the corners, dodging Tobirama’s slapping fingers, while he nodded towards where Izuna was moodily sliding lower in his chair.

“I had our resident investigative expert check out your lab for foul play so we have a general idea of what happened at least, you guys don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Unfortunately that’s really the only solid thing we learned yesterday.”

“Not true,” Izuna said. “Your seer helped us determine that whoever laid the original seal is here in the castle, at least. That makes it an inside attack.”

“That’s a lot of people to go through, even if we’re just looking at the staff and not including the thousands of students who stay here all year round.” Hashirama shook his head.

“Well you’re the headmaster, you would know your staff best. Let’s make sure these idiots are fine and then you and I can sit down together to go over a list of your staff for possible suspects. I’ve haven’t been here for that long but I’m already sick of watching these two cuddle up like an old married couple; let’s get this shit figured out so I can leave again.” Hauling himself up, Izuna quickly ducked away when Madara and Tobirama both shot up in the bed to reach out and smack him.

After calling Tsunade over it took a bit to convince her that her two patients were okay to leave. She wanted them to stay a while longer for observation but both of them did their best to impress upon her that they would rest much more easily at home. Eventually she gave in to her father’s infamous puppy eyes and allowed them to go, one finger shaking threateningly under her uncle’s nose with instructions to take it easy for at least a day or two and not push themselves to separate again before they were ready. Her descriptions of the mental trauma she expected might result from any more forceful separations was enough to have them promising to take it as easy as she liked.

Crawling out of bed was easy. Making it to the end of the hallway was more difficult. Neither Tobirama nor Madara understood how tired they really were until they closed the door of the infirmary and realized just how far away their rooms were.

With Izuna laughing mercilessly at them the whole way they managed to stumble along the halls, fingers woven together and curled tightly against the fear that one of them might trip and accidentally pull them apart. Several dozen students who knew one or both of them stopped to watch them go by, staring at their entwined hands with the light of gossip in their eyes, but it was easier to ignore this time than it had been before. Having a taste of what it was like to be apart had only affirmed the unspoken agreement that this was just how things would be from here on out. For the rest of their lives it would be the two of them together come what may. Hashirama, at least, could be counted on to support them as he was supporting them now while they straggled their way back home.

Their brothers saw them both tucked in to bed and then headed off together with their attention already turning to which of the staff could possibly have a grudge against either Tobirama or Madara – or even Hashirama himself since he was the one who was originally supposed to be walking patrol duty that evening. It was a surprise that they even remembered to turn off the lights and lock the doors on their way out.

Finally alone again, Madara and Tobirama shuffled under the covers until they were facing each other with their foreheads touching once more before letting themselves drift off for a much needed nap.

Sleep came easily to them, although that wasn’t much of a surprise considering how tired they were. On the journey here Hashirama told them about how their bodies had gone in to shock and begun to seize shortly after they were found so it was no wonder they were feeling exhausted despite not having done anything for a solid twelve hours. In fact, it was probably lucky that neither of them were injured in any way, no bitten tongues and no heads bashed against the concrete while they jerked about uncontrollably.

The bedroom was golden with late afternoon sunlight when they finally woke up again and the covers so warm that moving out from underneath them felt like an impossibility. With no one here to remind them it took more than fifteen minutes for them to remember to pull back in to their own minds and remember who they were separately.

Laying so close together gave Tobirama an excellent excuse to trace his eyes along the planes of Madara’s face and admire the shape of his jaw, the curved cheekbones that gave him the appearance of permanent chubby cheeks and always made him look cute instead of angry when he puffed them out with rage. Tobirama studied the dark color of the eyes looking back at him and the sweeping lashes that framed them. Quiet thoughts about what Izuna had said yesterday morning crept in before he could stop them and, as close as they were both pressed against the barrier between their minds, he knew Madara would be able to hear what he was thinking.

He hated to admit it, just like he hated to admit any time Izuna was right about something, but there was a possibility that some of those things they had both denied so vehemently were true. Now that he took a few moments to really think about it he thought that perhaps they had gotten closer than he realized – and in ways he hadn’t at all expected.

Right now with his consciousness still very close to slipping right over in to Madara’s was probably not a great time to discover the fact that he might actually have romantic feelings for his partner that he probably hadn’t noticed until now simply because their bond made everything between them feel so natural and right. In that way it did make sense to him that he would fall hard and fast, much more so than if he wasn’t able to see Madara’s true self and how compatible they really were.

It wasn’t quite shame that painted his cheeks red since there was little point in being ashamed of anything between them but more of a general embarrassment for being the one to prove them both wrong after they denied feeling anything romantic for each other. Still, he held Madara’s gaze when he saw the man’s eyebrows slide up with momentary disbelief and listened carefully to the way his thoughts stopped to consider the idea. The genuine curiosity and the fact that there was no hesitance or mocking in his thoughts would have given Tobirama pause if he hadn’t spent so long at this point getting to know the man behind the scowl that he himself had once mocked so easily. Not that it failed entirely to surprise him but he was still touched in a way he couldn’t explain.

More than touched, he felt the first stirrings of hope when Madara’s curiosity rose like a cresting wave. When his partner shifted and ducked down to tentatively press their lips together he held as still as he possibly could for the first few seconds, afraid to ruin the moment, as if by simply twitching wrong he could drive Madara away from him and make the other realize what he was doing.

Their first kiss was quite possibly the softest thing Tobirama had ever experienced in his life, a slow glide of soft lips, limbs shifting to wrap around each other as tightly as they could. Slave to the drive for as much contact as possible, Madara pushed himself up to roll Tobirama on to his back. Listening to the thoughts passing back and forth between them meant that Tobirama was on board with that almost before the movement had begun. Madara touched his shoulder and he rolled without having to wait for the pressure asking him to do so. Having a thigh on either side of him and the weight of his partner pressing him down in to the mattress made him feel safe, grounded, and the sheer rightness of it left his mind free to concentrate on the incredible warmth of their kiss.

Apparently Madara was enjoying the experience as much as he was, pleasantly surprised sensations filling them both as he cocked his head for a better angle and very carefully drew Tobirama’s bottom lip in between his teeth for a light nibble. They groaned at the same time and that was their clue for what was happening.

Far too connected, their physical reactions were caught in a feedback loop where everything experienced by one was shared with the other. Tobirama pressed one hand in the center of Madara’s chest but his partner only pulled back a single inch.

“Is this- are we sure you’re not just interested in whatever this is because I am?” he asked quietly, scared of the answer but knowing that he had to ask anyway.

“Of course I’m interested because you are,” Madara said. Before Tobirama could panic he scoffed and added, “But who’s to say it’s not you that’s interested because I am and you were just the one to figure it out? That’s the whole point, Tobirama. We’re intertwined, we’re _one,_ everything you feel I feel too. If you laugh then I laugh. If you love…then I love.”

Without the words to properly express himself Tobirama settled for pulling Madara down to meet him once more. Obviously he had been around the block a time or two in these matters but he would have felt confident even without any prior experience in saying that nothing had ever felt quite as good as having Madara’s tongue trace the shape of his bottom lip while blunt fingers drew shapes along the lines of his ribs. And by the sensations passing back to him through their bond he gathered that Madara very much approved of the way he used his own hands to skim the length of the spine arching above him.

The first time Madara rocked down against him it was hard to tell if he was being flooded with his own pleasure or his partner’s – or even both at the same time in equal force – but he found it hard to care when it felt so good that he could do nothing but shift his hands down to grip the man’s waist and encourage him to repeat the motion. Their bodies rolled together in perfect sync. Within moments Tobirama was lost to the rhythm.

It should have come as no surprise when the edges began to blur, when the separation between the two of them grew slowly indistinct. Each caress of their hands and every movement of their bodies was experienced by both of them until eventually Tobirama could no longer tell which hand was his own or whether he was the one to initiate a movement. Still he clung tighter in whatever ways he could with what limbs he thought might be his own, more and more desperate, never satisfied and always hungry for another touch. It was hard to tell whether that hunger was his own or not but he felt no qualms with following it.

Pleasure running rampant and unchecked through their veins, neither of them were paying much attention to the fact that they were perhaps getting a little too close until between one moment and the next it stopped mattering. The sensations melted together as one or both of them slipped across the barrier and they were together in the most perfect way.

From then it no longer mattered who was touching where. What mattered was that it felt good and it felt right. Hands pulled away clothes and lips pressed in to skin. Tongues and nails teased the places no one else knew about while one of their other hands reached out to dig in a nearby drawer for the half full bottle of lube they knew had to be somewhere close. Soft shameless noises dripped from their lips as fingers were slicked and one of their bodies was slowly worked open.

Which body wasn’t important. Identity wasn’t important. They both felt the pleasure of being stretched and filled as they moved together and they both felt the heat coiling in their bellies like nothing they had ever experienced before. When they peaked they did so as one massive flood of pleasure crashing down over them, muscles clenching and voices crying out together, two sets of eyes open wide yet seeing nothing but each other. There was no word in their shared mind to describe the incredible sensation except ‘perfect’.

Coming down from the high was as unique as building it up had been. At some point whoever had been inside the other slipped away and they both fell to their sides once more to wind around each other with as many limbs as possible.

Oddly, detangling their minds in that moment felt nowhere near as terrible as it usually would, perhaps because one of them felt as though they had a point to make to the other and even though that point was made as easily as thinking about it when they were still joined in this way that just wasn’t the same as saying it out loud. It did still take a bit of effort to figure out which thoughts belonged to who and what name went where but after several slow minutes they were staring in to each other’s eyes and Tobirama found it impossible to look away from the expression on Madara’s face.

“That was…intense,” his partner murmured and Tobirama couldn’t help but agree.

“I would feel embarrassed about the poor showing for my stamina but honestly I don’t know if I could survive that much intensity over long periods of time.”

“Yes I think quick but incredible trumps long but mediocre any day of the week.” Madara took a moment to stare at him again before he asked softly, “Does it really matter where the feelings came from as long as we both feel them?”

Tobirama rolled his eyes. “I suppose not. This is all just…very fast. Logically I know that anything I can do you can keep up with since we’ve both got the power of two brains to work with but…”

“But you can’t help but worry. I get it. ‘What if’ is in your nature, I suppose, what with all the experiments you do and all the research papers you’ve written. Sometimes I’m surprised you haven’t discovered the inner workings of the entire world yet just from asking too many questions.”

Squirming in place, Tobirama hummed. “I feel like I have the energy to go do it,” he mumbled.

Which was true. He’d never been one of those men who came once and then passed out. Sex had always left him feeling energized and after such an intense orgasm as the one he’d just experienced he felt like he could take on the world itself. Madara, on the other hand, was definitely one of the ones that always wanted a nap afterwards. He still made an effort to sit up and look around to see where their clothing had gotten to, bringing one leg out of the blankets to discover a pair of underwear not his own hooked around his ankle.

“I’ll come sit in the lab with you if you stay in one place so I can just sleep on the table or something.”

“Deal,” Tobirama agreed. “I might even have something soft in there you can use as a pillow.”

“Actually I was planning to just fall asleep on your shoulder.”

“Oh. Yes that…that would be preferable.” They smiled at each other and Tobirama sat up as well to capture a kiss from those inviting lips.

This was indeed all happening very fast but he supposed there was no point in denying a truth once it had been discovered. Whether it was that the connection left them no choice but to fall for each other or that it had simply shown them how compatible they really are and the feelings were all their own, wondering about it was truly pointless. All he should care about was that they did love each other – and that Izuna could never know it was his words that had sparked the beginning of these discoveries.

Just because they had found their happiness didn’t mean they had to do something as disgusting as spread it around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And you guys all thought I would be dropping angst on you this chapter. Surprise! It's vague smut instead!


	9. Chapter 9

Despite the original incident feeling as though it had taken place months and years before, the truest testament to how little time had actually passed was in the way they still discovered something new about their bond almost every day. They discovered that evening when Hashirama and Izuna tried to bring them their dinner that the school’s protective wards now recognized Madara’s essence when it was Tobirama trying to speak to them, allowing him to ask politely for no one to have access to their rooms. Listening to both of their brothers hammer fruitlessly on the door and call through it to beg entrance had been a special cruel sibling sort of joy.

They hadn’t let either of them in, of course. It was much more fun to hunker down on the other side and snicker just loud enough that it was obvious they were being assholes deliberately.

At this point there was little reason for Hashirama to continue bringing their food up to them; it hadn’t actually been necessary for several days. They were able to able to separate long enough to make it down to the dining hall so they could sit next to each other and press their legs together as they ate so as not to make a big scene for the student body at large. Or they could have simply waited until typical meal times were over and seek food when there were fewer people present – or even gone down to the kitchen themselves instead. Really the whole point of avoiding people had begun with a desire not to start rumors that they were together simply because the bond forced them to maintain physical contact at first. Now that they had given in and recognized they really were together the only reason they kept Hashirama trotting through the hallways to bring them their meals was sheer laziness.

Unfortunately being lazy and asking their food to come to them meant that if they kept Hashirama out then they weren’t going to be fed. Tobirama was sure he had some snacks buried within his possessions somewhere but since he’d forgotten exactly where that meant they were forced to relent and ask the wards to allow Hashirama back in when he arrived with their breakfast the next morning.

Luckily for them they woke up fairly early, having caught up on lots of sleep the day before, so there was plenty of time for them to shower before company arrived. Heading for the bathroom together was a natural routine for them by now but for the first time after Tobirama reached in to turn on the hot water he turned back around to face his partner and reached for Madara’s clothing with a smile. They undressed each other slowly, piece by piece, discovering each other’s bodies as separate entities while they had the chance since it was clear that intimate activities between them would always be a little too close to the barrier.

When they were both bare Tobirama pulled them in to the shower stall and under the hot water. His eyes closed first for the spray on his face but they stayed closed simply to enjoy the moment when Madara pressed in to him, the two of them spending the next several minutes doing nothing but holding each other close.

Despite both of them being wet and naked there was nothing sexual about their movements as they very carefully soaped each other down and lathered each other’s hair. Tobirama found a moment to laugh at how hard it was to maneuver the thick mass of hair on Madara’s head but he still took great pleasure in working his fingers through it all. When they finally stepped out they took turns helping each other towel off. It was the single most intimate thing either of them had ever done with a partner, simply enjoying each other’s touch and knowing that they _could_ easily turn to sex but also knowing that they wanted more than that from their partnership. The frantic desire that usually marked the start of a new relationship simply wasn’t there. Just another benefit of bonding their minds together, Tobirama supposed.

Hashirama didn’t arrive until an hour later, Izuna trailing behind him, and both of them stopped to stare with matching expressions of disbelief when they spotted Madara and Tobirama stretched out on the couch together, one cuddled up underneath the other’s chin.

“I fucking knew it!” Izuna cried. Fingers buried in his partner’s hair, Tobirama gave his old rival a lofty look.

“Knew what? That we’ve grown close? Oh well spotted.”

“Hey, fuck you!” Izuna snarled.

“I would rather you didn’t,” Madara chipped in, melting further in to his other half. “I don’t want you sullying what’s mine with your gross little brother cooties.”

Dropping on to the closest seat, Izuna crossed his arms firmly and pointed out, “ _He’s_ a little brother.”

“Well he’s not mine.”

To make his point, Madara snuggled as close as possible and smooshed his face against Tobirama’s while grinning over at his sibling. Izuna gave them both a look of disgust. Clearly he could already tell that they really were together but messing with him was so much more fun than admitting he was right.

Hashirama twisted his hand in the air and removed all of their breakfasts from the small pocket of space he’d stored them in for ease of transport, setting them all on the corner of the table closest to their intended recipient. Then without even a change of expression he reached down and took hold of both Madara and Tobirama’s ears to pull them upright despite their howling protests. Once they were both sitting properly, allowed to touch without still being in an intimate embrace, he let them go and happily went to take his own seat.

“Anija, what the fuck?” Tobirama rubbed at his ear while Madara did the same at his side.

“None of that while we’re here,” Hashirama told them serenely. “We came with some news, finally.”

“Big news.” Izuna stuck his tongue out as if to say that he wouldn’t be divulging anything unless the two of them behaved. Madara showed him both middle fingers.

Tobirama, on the other hand, was curious. Absently reaching out to press Madara’s hands back down, he sat forward to pick up his portion of food with the other hand. “Go on then. Thrill me. It’s been three days since you arrived here, I’m sure it’s along the same lines of every other time we’ve seen you. Every time we think you might have a lead it goes nowhere.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong. We know exactly what happened now: who did it, why, and how.” Izuna shoveled a large bite of egg in to his mouth with the smug air of a man who had got one up on someone else. Then he choked when Hashirama clapped him on the back jovially.

“Yes! We know everything now thanks to Izuna’s good ideas!”

“Serious?” Madara looked over at Tobirama and then back at his brother. “Well get on with it then!” Izuna held up one finger until he was done aspirating eggs through his lungs.

“Okay so, first of all, the disturbance that tripped the alarms bothered me being so far off the ground. Turns out it was an incendiary spell shot from the entrance of the school. By the time you two got down there yourselves to go out on to the grounds the culprit had long since scarpered.” Shoveling another bite in his mouth, he chewed frantically and swallowed too soon so he could continue. “Also it turns out the seal that sent you away and kept you trapped in that cave was actually supposed to include a component to keep you warm but it was set up incorrectly and failed. Neither of you were ever meant to be in any danger.”

After sharing a long look, Madara and Tobirama lowered identical expressions of disbelief at the man across from them. Izuna shrugged and inhaled a bit more food.

“Then what was it for?” Madara demanded. “It was just supposed to get us out of the way?”

“Yep. Actually it was fairly neatly done. If not for that seer girl I might not have started looking in the right directions – although, you understand that you actually stood a better chance of solving this all yourself, don’t you? If no one had called me back here you all could have figured this out yourself if you and your new lovebird had just stopped playing house for two damn seconds.”

“I beg your pardon? What does my relationship with Tobirama have to do with anything?” Madara puffed himself up with protective indignation.

Across the room Izuna leaned forward with a triumphant expression. “Ha! I knew there was something between you!”

“When did he say that?” Tobirama asked mildly. “A friendship is a relationship. Being brothers is a relationship. Goodness, _detective_ , perhaps you’ve been working the job for so long you’re just determined to see smoke in every corner?” The effort he went to infusing the man’s title with as much scorn as possible seemed to pay off. He could almost hear Izuna’s teeth grinding from across the room.

Comfortably hunkered down in his own chair, Hashirama cradled his breakfast to his chest while his eyes flipped back and forth across the room like he was watching a tennis match, clearly not intending to interrupt whatever show they were all putting on.

“Look, do you want to know what happened to you or not?” Izuna snapped. For a moment Tobirama considered being honest that no, he really didn’t care as much anymore. How and why they were tricked in to that cave was so much less important than how they had survived the night and the incredible boon it granted them in the end. They had each other now and that was really all he cared about. On the other hand he supposed it was indeed important to know who had set them up to be sent away just to be sure they carried no further ill intentions. Neither of them would survive without the other anymore; if someone wanted to hurt one they would inevitably hurt the other and Tobirama would do anything to stop Madara from being hurt.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll behave.” Izuna gave him a suspicious look but eventually nodded and picked up his tale.

“Right, so, after a closer look I was able to determine that the energy of both spells was actually keyed to activate using Madara’s energy specifically, both the transportation seal and the barrier spell. Tobirama was just a bystander. Actually if it had been Hashirama with you that night as he was supposed to be then probably none of this would have ever happened.”

Hashirama flushed at a compliment that really wasn’t meant in any positive way. “It’s true, I probably could have just overwhelmed that barrier with my magic.”

“Exactly. Anyway, so I spoke to that young seer, Hinata, and she told me that the answers I was seeking could be found in your office. Does anyone else hate when they give you vague bullshit like that?”

“Less commentary on the inner workings of prophesy and The Sight, more getting on with it!” Madara huffed and viciously chewed his breakfast as though imagining he was chewing out his brother for taking so long to get to the point.

Amazing, Izuna actually got on with it. “Checking your office was actually a really good idea. There was no reason for me to do that until now but if you were the intended target then I thought maybe there would be something in there that might point me to a possible suspect. Bad energy has a way of following us around and it’s usually more reliable than the old ‘do you know of anyone who might want to hurt you’ shit.”

“I assume you found something there?” Tobirama leaned forward at the same time his partner did.

“Yeah actually. I found everything. Everywhere.”

“What?”

“All your shit was tossed everywhere, Aniki. Drawers pulled open, files messed up, shit spilling out of cupboards. I tried to clean some of it up because I know you’re super anal about that stuff but yeah. You’re not going to like what you see when you go in there.” Izuna cringed, probably remembering one of the numerous times he had messed with his older brother’s things in their younger days before he learned to fear the revenge that always came after.

Madara’s fists clenched and the muscles in his cheek began to twitch until Tobirama put a hand over his and wove their fingers together. Then he simply held on tight and let the calm of his other half bleed over to keep his head level.

Ignoring the fact that his brother looked stunned he had managed to keep his temper, Madara asked, “You know who it was, then?”

“Some of your students,” Izuna told him. “Actually it’s quite impressive what they managed to pull off. Hashirama had them brought in to his office this morning and I had a chance to question them before we came up to see you two. Everything they used to pull this off was all magic they learned from your class. The transportation seal was powered by one of the lesser fire spirits, the incendiary spell they used to trip the alarm system was something you demonstrated in class, and the barrier – which they didn’t fully understand, apparently they found it in a book – was woven through with a backup measure that would fry the skin off of anyone who tried to force their way through. They felt pretty bad about that when I told them what it would have done.”

“My own _students_!?”

“Oh Madara, they didn’t really mean to hurt you!” Hashirama shook his head. “Like he said, they were really surprised when we told them that barrier was actually meant for forceful containment. They were trying to impress you!”

“Well consider me impressively angry!” Madara stood from the couch but he couldn’t exactly go far without letting go of Tobirama’s hand and since he didn’t want to do that he ended up just standing in place, grinding his teeth for lack of any other way to express himself.

It took a minute or so for Tobirama to gather enough calm for himself to spare some across their bond and encourage his partner back on to the couch. Were they alone he would have pulled Madara in to his arms and soothed him with fingers in that thick mane of hair, long strokes down the length of his spine, but he managed to restrain himself to simply implying those sorts of thoughts across their bond until Madara settled in to his side with a few reluctant grumbles.

After they were both settled he looked up at Izuna with a serious expression. “Whether they intended injury or not is beside the point. The betrayal still stings.”

“Betrayal?” Izuna cocked his head back to bark with laughter. “No, no, betrayal what absolutely not their intention.”

“Will you ever be getting to the actual point, then, or am I going just wrap him in pillows every time he goes to class for fear of which student has it in for him?” It took effort not to flush when he felt how much the gesture touched the man at his side. He cared less about the looks his statement got him from their two visitors.

Hashirama clutched one hand to his chest and flapped the other in Izuna’s general direction. “Oh just look at them! I know you two don’t want to admit it but I’m – I’m just _so happy for you_! I always knew you guys would get along if you tried!”

“Getting along has never been what I wanted between them,” Izuna grumbled. “Least of all this.”

“I think it’s sweet!”

“Anija! Quit beating around the bush and tell us what the fuck we should be on the lookout for or I’ll tell the wards to lock you out of here for a month! For shit’s sake! Neither of us is very patient, you know!”  Tobirama scowled.

Mumbling to himself about how it wasn’t fair that Tobirama had so much patients for his work but none for people, Hashirama moodily gestured for Izuna to pick up the thread once more.

“They just wanted to look at your answers,” he said. Madara blinked slowly.

“Come again?”

“Seriously, that’s it. They set up this whole trap for you just to get a good look at your answer key for this year’s exam. Apparently they knew that you had increased the security around your office so they researched the seal and the barrier then waited for a night when you grumbled in class about having to walk patrol so they could set off the alarm and therefore give themselves enough time to break through your wards.” Izuna very calmly pretending to bam a set of drums in the ever-famous _ba-dum-tss_ of triumph, panting a little from such a long run on sentence but looking smug nonetheless.

Madara was still staring. “Those…little…fuckers…I’ll fucking fail them _all_!”

“You can’t do that when we already know who it was!” Hashirama protested.

Barely holding in his laughter, Tobirama managed to ask, “So who was it then?”

“Um…I’m sorry Madara but it was actually your nephew, Uchiha Kagami. He didn’t need them for himself but apparently he promised he would wheedle them out of you for some of his friends. When he heard you give a lecture on what you had done to the last students that tried to steal the answer key he thought perhaps you would have mercy if he could impress you with how much he’d learned throughout the year.”

“Well he was wrong! Ooh I’m going to fail him! And all his little friends! I’ll fail their parents! And their grandchildren! The whole stupid class! Everyone!”

“Perhaps it would be best if the two of you gave us until lunch to let this information settle in.” Tobirama very serenely gathered Madara in to his arms and led him away from their half-finished meals while he continued to shout angry nonsense.

Izuna was up out of his chair with no more prompting than that but Hashirama hovered until Madara began screeching about burning his own nephews hair off strand by strand. Not for any pain or injury, just to make him sit there with the stench of burnt hair in his nose for hours on end. That was the point when Hashirama nodded quietly to himself and moved towards the door.

Tobirama could only be thankful that it had been Izuna that delivered the news rather than Madara finding out for himself. In that light it was probably a good thing that his own sense of home had bled over in to the other man so strongly that neither of them had even once thought to trundle on over to Madara’s set of rooms at any point since they left the infirmary for the first time, let alone trek over to his actual office. He wondered for a moment, had they seen Madara’s office and figured things out for themselves, if things might have been different.

He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it occurred to him. The feelings between them were both genuine and inevitable. Also useful, as he demonstrated right then by pressing Madara against the closest wall and using the best weapon he had at his disposal: distraction. His partner melted in to the kiss immediately as though he’d never been angry in the first place.

Standing just outside the door they hadn’t quite closed yet, both Izuna and Hashirama gave matching cries of shock and some kind of garbled “I knew it!” exclamations. Tobirama removed one hand reluctantly from where it was cupped around Madara’s cheek to instead press it against the wall.

Their brothers’ shouting was lost when the school wards answered his plea and slammed the door shut, locking them and their voices out.

“Well that was rude,” Madara whispered against his lips. “Have I mentioned yet today that I love you?”

“You could stand to mention it more often.”

“Noted.”

“Feeling a little calmer now?” Tobirama smirked when his question was met a spark of interest in his partner’s eyes.

Madara drew him back in for another slow kiss before he answered. “Absolutely not. I am simply enraged. Whatever can you do to keep me distracted?”

“Oh I’m sure I can think of something.”

Already close enough to blur the edges, Madara could clearly hear what he was thinking as he shuddered and tilted his head back for Tobirama to drag sharp teeth against the base of his neck. Obviously he was all too willing to allow himself to be kept calm through a different sort of excitement.

Tobirama very easily tuned out the sound of their siblings hammering on the front door of their rooms, pulling Madara away from the wall to lead him back in to the bedroom instead. He felt absolutely no guilt over outing the true nature of their relationship at last in such a manner. If the two idiots had guessed it already then they should have known that these sort of activities were bound to happen from times to time – and that Tobirama’s utter lack of shame had rubbed off on Madara at least somewhat when their minds were blended together.

Later when they were decent enough for company to return he was sure they would both be subjected to lectures on how to behave with others around and why it wasn’t nice to keep secrets. Tobirama didn’t care. He already knew he wouldn’t be listening to a word either of them said.

The threat they had worried about for so long had amounted to nothing more than children going a bit too far in their efforts to cheat. For at least a little while they both had their precious siblings here with them like one big happy family. And best of all he had Madara in his arms; together they were perfect and there was nothing to stop them from spending the rest of their lives in perfect oneness. He hadn’t asked for any of this but Tobirama was so very grateful that he had been given this chance anyway and as he slid across the barrier to unite himself with his other half he knew that Madara, in that last shining moment before they lost themselves in each other, felt much the same.


End file.
